Creative Capital Open Call (Due Apr. 4)
Creative Capital Open Call
Deadline: April 4th, 2025
The 2026 Open Call seeks proposals for new artistic works in the Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Film, and Literature.
The Creative Capital Award provides unrestricted project grants of up to $50,000 to individual artists to create new work. The new State of the Art Prize provides unrestricted artist grants of $10,000.
Marking 25 years of groundbreaking artist support, Creative Capital is expanding its support of individual artists across the United States and its territories with the 2026 Open Call for the Creative Capital Award and the launch of a new two-year initiative, the State of the Art Prize, which is designed to further expand our grants and services to uplift more regional and rural artists, to invest in grassroots creative economies, and to foster a vibrant cultural landscape across the U.S. Our goal is to support artists of various identities, ages, and career stages working across a range of disciplines, themes, and ideas.
Creative Capital encourages a spirit of mutual generosity and exchange among our community through awardee gatherings, peer learning, and artist-to-artist connections. Creative Capital also invites artists who have realized financial success through our programs to give back to the organization through tax-deductible donations to help support the next generation of artists creating groundbreaking new works.
For the 2026 grant cycle, Creative Capital invites professional artists to propose experimental, original, bold new works in Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Film, and Literature. Multidisciplinary, technology, and/or socially engaged projects are welcome in all disciplinary categories. Creative Capital seeks project proposals for formally and/or conceptually innovative works in all disciplines, including, but not limited to, painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and multimedia, dance, theater, playwriting, jazz, opera, music, experimental film, documentary and narrative film, poetry, and fiction.
Creative Capital welcomes a full range of artistic approaches and thematic inquiries, including boundary-pushing formal explorations, as well as projects that engage urgent social issues of our time. Creative Capital also seeks new projects or works addressing subjects that Creative Capital has not previously funded. For example, for this grant cycle, Creative Capital also seeks strong visual arts projects dealing with fentanyl, veterans/military, or wealth inequality.
The Creative Capital Award seeks project proposals in the following disciplines:
Visual Arts: architecture & design, craft, drawing & illustration, ecological art, installation, painting & printmaking, performance art, photography, public art, sculpture, social practice, sound art, video art, technology, and socially-engaged visual art
Performing Arts: dance, jazz, multimedia performance, music, musical theater, opera, theater, playwriting, technology, and socially-engaged performing arts
Film: animation, documentary film, experimental film, and narrative film
Literature: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry
A diverse cohort of approximately 50 artists will be selected for the Creative Capital Award through an external review process. Our goal is to support artists and new works across a range of disciplines, themes and ideas, geographic regions, identities, ages, and career stages. See recent Creative Capital Awardees and Projects for 2025, 2024, and 2023.
Creative Capital’s transformative giving approach is built on the principle that artists need funding as well as networks and advisory services in order to realize ambitious projects and build thriving careers. Recipients of the Creative Capital Award receive access to a full range of professional development services over a five-year period. These services include strategic planning, legal and financial advising, marketing and communications strategy, peer mentorship, and industry networking opportunities.