The Aluminium Crown short story contest
2026 prompt and submission guide.
"Today marks a new era for the great city of Melbourne. After 25 years of incredible architecture and engineering, the Central Business Cube, the CBC, is now complete. Our future downtown is no dome, it is a place of straight lines. Only the most righteous angles will protect our glorious commercial district.
"One of our founders, Robert Russell, dreamt of the Hoddle Grid project, an organised collection of parallel and perpendicular streets that would form the Central Business District, the CBD. This area became the beating heart of the great southern bastion, our city of Melbourne. Russell's dream will be protected forever more, but now in the 3rd Dimension.
I now declare the Central Business Cube officially open for business."
- Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Francis 'The Permit' Doyle, 1st of January, 2055
In the year 2055, due to environmental pressures, Melbourne will be forced to think inside the box: the CBD will be enclosed in a gargantuan protective structure. This is the Central Business Cube, the CBC.
The Aluminium Crown Contest Collective are looking for stories based around this speculative event in the future of Australia. Any stories about the Cube are welcome and will be considered for our prizes. That said, we love dystopias, but be aware you'll be in the majority of other entries if that's your strict genre choice.
If you're planning to read the stories on the site, Welcome Committee is a kind of unofficial introduction life in the CBC. But it is only one introduction - it is a story from the cube, but it is not your story from the cube. Yours can be related, or it can be set in your unique region of time and space. It just has to include the central conceit.
This contest is run by The Aluminium Crown Contest Collective based in Melbourne, Australia. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land it is organised on, the Wurundjeri people, and we pay our respects to Elders past and present.
Conditions of entry
Entry requirements
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Submissions open on 1 July 2026 and close on 31 Oct 2026.
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Word length between 500-4000 words.
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No entry fee, one original story per author/s (entries can be single authored or multi-authored).
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Contestants must be 18+ years old.
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Stories cannot be published elsewhere (including blogs/Facebook etc).
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Open to Australian and international writers.
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Accepting stories written in English. Other languages are acceptable for functional/character usage, but for practicality the characters and story need to be comprehensible to an English reader. Grammar and spelling doesn’t need to be amazing and we welcome L.O.T.E. speakers.
Submission
Email your submission to thealuminiumcrown@gmail.com with the email subject line:
'The Aluminium Crown 2026 submission: [Story name] by [Author Name]'
Please submit your entry as a Word Doc attachment (.doc or .docx), double spaced, with 12-point text.
We're a pro-serif contest, so please use a serif font like Times New Roman or EB Garamond.
Your personal details should not be included in your submission document as judges assess all submissions anonymously.
Please include name, email, full postal address and phone number in the body of the email.
Judging
The judging panel will be announced mid-submission period. Once submission closes, stories will be judged and a long list of 20 pieces will be created. If long-listed, entrants will be contacted and have 24 hours to withdraw from our prize or their stories will be locked into the draw.
Entrants who are long-listed must not advertise the submitted piece until the final prize closes. From the long list, judges will then decide on a short list of three stories. These three entrants will be asked to submit a picture, a single link and a 50-word bio to be placed alongside their publication if it wins. This is not mandatory, we respect anonymity and enjoy pseudonyms. First place will be chosen from the short list through a consensus from the judges. Winners will be awarded prizes as follows:
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1st place: Minimum AUD$300 and publication on the website
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Judge's Prize: Publication on the website
Publication
Once the winners are finalised, our short list will be announced on this website. The stories that win the contest and the Judges Prize will be published on the site.
Based on the success of the contest, we will consider creating a print version for our future contests.
We retain the right to slightly alter the story for publication (grammar, spelling,etc). Any major changes will only be undertaken with the author's consent. The authors retain all rights of their stories for future use. For any further publication of submitted stories, we'd love it if you could include a link to The Aluminium Crown short story contest to promote our organisation and spread goodwill.
Organisation and funding
Funding for the contest will be sourced from the Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) running in Victoria, Australia. Cans and bottles will come from the bins of the judges and by donations. All cans and bottles are welcome for donation and will allow our contest to remain functional, independent, and sustainable. If you are interested in donating, email us and we'll arrange the Garbage Knight to come and pick them up: thealuminiumcrown@gmail.com. The Aluminium Crown short story contest is the only short story contest powered by cans.
As per the prize thermometer, we are currently collecting cans for this years prize pool. Cans and bottles will continue to be collecting preceeding the contest conclusion on 31 Oct 2026. Any additional funds collected from the CDS will be added to the contest prize pool. Any shortfall with the $300 prize total will be made up by contributions from The Aluminium Crown Contest Collective.
Other business
This is the second year of The Aluminium Crown and there are still plenty of kinks to work out. Plus the contest is inherently messy - it's powered by waste. If you have any questions, concerns, etc, we'd love to hear from you at thealuminiumcrown@gmail.com