Cultural Department of the City of Munich Department 1 / Literature

If you are working on a literary project, you can apply for a literary scholarship from the city.

Description

In 2025, the City of Munich will award ten scholarships for authors and translators totalling 8,000 euros each. In addition, the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize for Literature will be awarded with 3,000 euros.

The literary scholarships and the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize for Literature are intended to support promising projects by predominantly younger Munich authors; there is no age limit for the literary scholarships, but only authors under the age of 30 are eligible for the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize. Two scholarships for translators recognise outstanding achievements in the translation of particularly challenging texts into German.

One scholarship is awarded in each of the fields of children's and young adult literature. Illustrated projects can also be submitted; the prize money is split between the author and the illustrator.
One of the two artists must be resident in Munich.

Another scholarship honours a project in the field of illustration/graphic novel.

Winners of the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize are excluded from applying for a scholarship or the Wolf Prize for the following call for applications; literature scholarship holders are excluded for two subsequent calls for applications.
Each applicant may only submit one project. It is not possible to apply for the City of Munich's literary scholarship and the City of Munich's working scholarship for Munich authors at the same time.

Applications (from January 2025) should be sent to: literaturstipendium@muenchen.de
The closing date for applications is 14 March 2025; the date of receipt applies.

Prerequisites

The authors or translators live in Munich (S-Bahn area) - in the case of illustrated projects in the children's/young adult book sector, at least half of the artists involved.
The submitted texts must be unpublished (until the end of the competition year).
Only texts in German can be submitted

Required documents

biographical details and any previous publications
a short description of the project (synopsis), maximum 1 page

Samples of work from the project
- for prose a maximum of 30 pages
(standard manuscript pages, approx. 1,800 characters)
- for poetry a maximum of 20 poems
- for children's and youth literature a maximum of 15 pages
- for dialogue forms (plays, audio plays etc.) the draft/preliminary draft of the play (approx. 20 pages)
- for translation projects: German translation and original text depending on genre in appropriate length (prose 15 pages, poetry 10 pages)

the project must be summarised in a PDF file- named according to the pattern Name.Firstname.Application2025.pdf.

Legal basis

By submitting the application, the applicant agrees to the terms and conditions of the call for applications and confirms that he/she has his/her main residence in Munich (S-Bahn area). Applications that do not comply with the conditions of the call for applications cannot be considered.

Processing time

All formally correct and complete applications will be submitted to the jury convened by the City Council. It will make a pre-selection based on artistic quality criteria and recommend the selected applicants to the City Council. The final decision is made by the City Council in the Cultural Committee in the summer. The selected applicants will be notified in September/October 2025.