Propositions for the START21ART competition

KUBIKUM FOUNDATION with the support of CENTRAL ART REGISTER announces 5. year of the Czech-Slovak art competition intended for selected fourth-year students of schools with an artistic focus under the name START21ART.
The aim of the competition is to support and promote the work of young artists at the start of their professional careers. To prepare them for artistic practice and profession, to help them gain experience, authorial skills and to present themselves to the general public through the online space.

Conditions of the competition:

The competition can be entered by any school with an artistic focus operating in the Slovak Republic or the Czech Republic, whose share of its artistic departments/programs constitutes at least 50% of all departments/programs and which registers on the website www.start21art.sk for the Slovak Republic and on the website www.start21art.cz for the Czech Republic.

The school will choose the students who will represent it! However, a maximum of 10% of all its students in the last (fourth) year can nominate. (For every ten students who have started, one nominated competitor.) The nominated student must be of legal age at the time of registration for the competition.

The competition allows the competitor to be guided by a teacher from the sending school during the competition. The name of this teacher – guarantor will be provided by the competitor when registering his/her competition work.

Each student can enter one of his/her work created exclusively for this competition into the competition. Before the competition, this work must not have been exhibited anywhere or entered into another competition.

• The theme for this year's competition is: "Paradox"
• The technique used is a matter of the author's free choice.
• Dimensions of the competition work:
  • minimum: 29.7 x 42 cm
  • maximum: 100 x 100 cm
• The work must be signed by the author and marked on the back with a label with a description of the work (title, author, year of creation, technique used, theme, simple description).
• If the work is a graphic or photograph, the author is obliged to label the first original author's print of the graphic or photograph.
• The work must be photographed from the front and back together with the label.
• The work will be evaluated online based on its digitized form.
• This must have the required parameters and quality: at least 3000 px and a resolution of at least 72 dpi, the maximum file size (digitized form of the work) is 10 MB, the allowed file formats for the uploaded file are JPEG, SVG, PNG.

The competition works are evaluated in the first level of the competition by a jury consisting of representatives of the sending schools and other representatives from the field of artistic practice and education separately for the Slovak Republic and separately for the Czech Republic. Each participating school may nominate one juror from the country from which the nominating school is from to the first level of the competition. Other representatives from the field of artistic practice and education are nominated separately to the jury for the Slovak Republic and separately to the jury for the Czech Republic by the competition organizer

The competition works are evaluated in the final of the competition by a joint jury for the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. The jurors to the jury in the final are nominated by the competition organizer, while the members of this jury may or may not be jurors from the first level. All winning works from level I, i.e. 21 works from the Slovak Republic and 21 works from the Czech Republic. The final competition will take place on the website www.start21art.eu.

Competition schedule:

22. 9. 2025	announcement of the START21ART,
22. 8. 2025 – 30. 9. 2025	school registration on the website www.start21art.sk or www.start21art.cz (depending on the country in which the school is located) via the online form,
25. 9. 2025 – 21. 11. 2025	registration of the student and his/her competition work on the website www.start21art.sk or www.start21art.cz (depending on the country in which the school is located) via an online form,
1. 10. 2025 – 21. 11. 2025	juror registration on the website www.start21art.sk or www.start21art.cz (depending on the country where the school is located) via the online form,
1. 12. 2025 – 12. 1. 2026	evaluation of works by the jury,
21. 1. 2026	publication of the results of the 1st level of the competition,
1. 11. 2025 - 21. 2. 2026	evaluation of the final works by the jury at www.start21art.eu,
23. 2. 2026	publication of the results of the competition finals on www.start21art.eu,
25. 2. 2026 – 27. 2. 2026	Voting Online Star,
20. 3. 2026 – 18. 4. 2026	Auction of all competition works on www.kubikum.com,
28. 3. 2026 – May 2026	presentation exhibition TOP42,
18. 4. 2026	award ceremony.

Prices:

• 2121 euros for schools from both countries (Czech Republic and Slovakia), whose students are ranked 1st in the given country, intended for the further development of artistic education,
• 210 euros for each student from the TOP21 in the Czech Republic and from the TOP21 in the Slovak Republic to support their further work,
• participation in the jury for I. level of evaluation for the next year of the competition for students who placed in I. level in 1st place,
• KUBIKUM Foundation award for the first three best students from the entire year of the competition
• ONLINE STAR award for the winner of the online vote of the public on the competition's Facebook page
• a commemorative publication with works and profiles of all participating students for each competitor from TOP21 in the Czech Republic and TOP21 in the Slovak Republic ,
• material prizes according to the decision of the competition organizer and registration on the KUBIKUM portal for 1 year with the KUBIKUM GOLD package, 1 pc author's certificate and 1 pc registration certificate, which will be automatically issued for the competition work, for all participants,
• registration on the KUBIKUM portal for the second year with the KUBIKUM GOLD package, 5 pcs author's certificates and 5 pcs registration certificates for works sold through the KUBIKUM registry for students who placed in the finals in order of 1st-3rd place,
• inclusion in the in-person exhibition held in Žilina and in the auction for the works that advanced to the finals, while the author of the auctioned work will receive 80% of the auctioned amount ( nowrap;'>20% will be donated to the KUBIKUM Foundation for the Support of Art).
• In addition, exhibition participants will have the chance to win a trip to Florence – the cradle of Renaissance art

Final provisions:

By registering for the competition, participants express their agreement to the terms and conditions set out in the competition statute.

The competition organizer reserves the right to amend the rules and conditions of the competition. Any change or amendment to the competition statute will be carried out in the same manner as the competition was announced. The competition statute with detailed conditions and further information can be found at www.start21art.sk.