For the True Story Award 2027, reportage from all over the world can be submitted. Texts should have been published between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026 in newspapers, magazines, or online.

• The submission deadline is Friday, 31 October 2026, at 12:00 pm (noon, UTC).
  Late submissions will not be considered.
• The texts’ length should be between 3 000 and 17 000 words.
• Re-published texts, books and manuscripts are ineligible.
• Visual and audiovisual works are ineligible.
• Academic papers and historical non-fiction texts are excluded.
• Texts can be submitted by the authors or by editors.
• In submitting their work, authors declare that their work covers actually researched events and that it complies with journalistic standards.

Authors have the following two options for submitting articles from any languages other than the 9 main languages:

1. Translate their text into English.
2. Submit their text in the original language.
   In this case, we also require a summary in English (at least 400 words). The original texts will be reviewed by native-speaking readers from our network. Selected texts will then be translated into English for evaluation by the jury.

If their work is nominated, the authors grant the organisers of the True Story Award the right to publish their work in English translation on the www.truestoryaward.org website and in German translation in the festival publication at the time of the annual award ceremony.