From Heart to Hand: Registrations Open for Hand & Lock’s 2026 Embroidery Prize

The Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery returns for 2026, marking 25 years of celebrating embroidered excellence and opening registrations to artists, designers and makers worldwide. Since its inception in 2000, the Prize has become one of the most respected platforms for contemporary embroidery, showcasing work from practitioners in over 60 countries and affirming stitch as a vital and expressive art form.

Hand & Lock’s Prize Brief Moodboard for 2026.

This anniversary year’s brief, Embroidery Talks: Visual Storytelling from Heart to Hand, invites entrants to explore embroidery as a narrative language. While storytelling is often associated with words, music or performance, the brief reminds us that some of the most enduring stories exist beyond text. From the Bayeux Tapestry to the choreography of Swan Lake, visual and material narratives have long carried emotion, memory and meaning across time.

Annette Ratti, First Place Open Fashion Prize, 2024.

Drawing on the deep linguistic and metaphorical connections between textiles and storytelling (think 'spinning a yarn', 'weaving narratives', or even 'embellishing the truth'), the brief positions the embroiderer as both author and narrator. Needle becomes quill, thread becomes ink, and materials such as beads, sequins, silk floss and bullion act as punctuation, metaphor and tone. Entrants are encouraged to translate stories from the realms of folklore, myth, literature, oral history, music or personal memory into embroidered form, whether through instinctive spontaneity or rigorous research-led practice...

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Image Credits:

Lead: Severina Seidl, Maleficium (detail). First place winner of the 2025 Hand and Lock Student Textile Art Prize. Image: Hand & Lock.

All further images as credited in photo captions.