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Alison Brown Young Comics Maestro Award 2026 competition launched

By John Freeman on 7 June 2026

The Alison Brown Young Comics Maestro Award 2026 competition is now open and organisers The Cartoon Museum are looking for the next big comic artist.

The Comics Maestro Award celebrates Cartoon Museum staff member Alison Brown, who passed away from Covid in 2021 at the age of just 39. Alison loved comics and championed young comic artists.

Entrants must be aged 18 or under. Send in your very best comic strip, three pages maximum, to enter the competition and get your work in front of judges from The Beano, The Phoenix, and The Cartoon Museum.

There will be one overall winner and two runners-up. The winner will receive a £200 prize and the runners-up will each receive £50 prizes.

The Cartoon Museum intend to announce the winners in September 2026.

The competition is international, but any entries must be written in English.

Good luck!

How to Enter

• To enter please send your comic strip to either The Cartoon Museum, 63 Wells Street, London, W1A 3AE or hello@cartoonmuseum.org

• Make sure you include your name and age, and if using email ask a parent or guardian to send in your cartoon

• The deadline for entries is Sunday 26 July 2026

• Comic strips must be no more than three A4 pages long.

• The Cartoon Museum are accepting hand drawn comics on paper and are also accepting digital art. Regrettably they will not be able to return any physical entries that are sent in

• The Cartoon Museum, based in London, is online at cartoonmuseum.org

• For some inspiration, you can download free drawing resources from the Cartoon Museum website to help your lay out your comic and learn to draw cartoon faces

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.