$15,000 for one work by an early-career Montreal artist, and arts du cirque is the first discipline listed.
This is a prize, not a project grant, which means it rewards something you have already made and presented. $15,000, one recipient, and you can put your own name forward.
Two numbers decide whether you are eligible. Five years of artistic practice maximum, and the work has to have had its first public presentation between 31 August 2025 and 1 September 2026.
CALQ manages the prize and Culture Montréal promotes the call and hands it out. It goes to an artist, a writer or a collective from Montreal for one original work.
The winner also gets an advertising campaign that CALQ runs in the print and digital editions of Le Devoir the day after the ceremony.
Scoring is 65% on the artistic quality of the work, broken into quality, interest and how new it is, and 35% on its impact, meaning what it contributed to the discipline, the weight of its first public presentation, and how far it travelled.
- ·Early-career professional artists, writers and collectives. The eligible list opens with arts du cirque, then digital arts, visual arts, multidisciplinary arts, film and video, song, dance, literature, storytelling, métiers d'art, music, theatre and architectural research.
- ·A maximum of five years of artistic practice at the date of application, counting your whole path, including years practised in another discipline.
- ·Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, usually resident in Quebec and resident there for the last 12 months. Two years or more outside Quebec makes you ineligible unless you have kept your Quebec resident status, which you prove through the provincial health insurance plan.
- ·You need at least one production outside or after your training, presented in a context recognised by your peers.
- ·The work has to have been presented publicly for the first time between 31 August 2025 and 1 September 2026, in a diffusion context recognised by peers.
- ·You can submit yourself or accept a nomination from someone else. Legally constituted companies are not eligible, and neither are staff of CALQ, Culture Montréal, the ministry, SODEC or any organisation involved in awarding the prize.