Portugal will pay 42 writers €15,000 each to write a book. Applications close 2 December
DGLAB opened 42 annual creation grants of €15,000 on 2 November: 24 for drama, essay, fiction and poetry, and 18 for comics and children's and young adult books. Open to Portuguese nationals and residents writing in Portuguese, until 23:59 on 2 December. Our maths on the last round: 155 applicants per grant in fiction, around 17 in drama.
Apply / Learn moreForty-two writers are about to get a year and €15,000 of public money to work on a book. Applications for the annual creation grants from Portugal’s books and libraries authority, DGLAB, opened at 10am today and close at 23:59 on 2 December.
Who can apply
The notices in the Diário da República are short. Anyone over 18 who is a Portuguese national or lives in Portugal can apply, as long as they write in Portuguese. So a Brazilian or Angolan author living here competes on the same terms, and so does any foreign resident who writes in the language.
There are two competitions. The literary one has 24 grants worth €360,000 in total, split across drama and theatre writing, essay, narrative fiction and poetry. The comics and children’s and young adult books round has 18 grants worth €270,000. Each one is €15,000.
Applications are online only, through the gov.pt portal. The detailed rules sit in portarias 40/2025/1 and 121/2025/1, and questions go to bolsas@dglab.gov.pt.
Where your odds are best
Nobody had published this, so we worked it out. For the previous round, the government’s note on the grants awarded gives the number of applications per area, and the 24 literary grants were shared equally between the four, six each.
- Narrative fiction: 931 applications, about 155 per grant;
- Essay: 245, about 41 per grant;
- Poetry: 235, about 39 per grant;
- Drama: 100, about 17 per grant;
- Children’s and young adult: 333 for 11 grants, about 30 per grant;
- Comics: 114 for 7 grants, about 16 per grant.
That means a playwright had roughly nine times the chance of a novelist, and comics were the least contested of all. Nobody should swap their novel for a play on the strength of it, but if you write both, it’s a fair hint.
Who decides
The juries are already named. For the literary grants: Golgona Anghel, Isabel Lucas, Joana Meirim, João Dionísio, José Bragança de Miranda, José Luís Peixoto, José Riço Direitinho and Paula Magalhães. For comics and children’s books: Andreia Brites, Dora Batalim SottoMayor and João Ramalho-Santos.
If you’re after a different kind of support for an arts career, the Laços Artísticos mobility grants for artists from Portuguese-speaking countries are worth a look too.
Illustration: Tugadaily
