Young ITA Writing Competition and Award 2026-2027: New Voices in International Arbitration (Prize USD 3,000; Submit by Jan 15, 2027)

Young ITA and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA), a division of The Center for American and International Law (CAIL) in Plano, Texas, USA, invite submissions for the 2026-2027 Young ITA Writing Competition and Award: “New Voices in International Arbitration”. The competition gives young professionals a chance to contribute to research in international arbitration, to be recognised as qualified voices in the field and to get involved in the activities of the ITA. The competition is organised with the support of Wolters Kluwer. It is a recurring competition: the official call for the previous 2025-2026 edition is also published on the CAIL website.

Papers may address any topic in the field of international commercial or investment arbitration.

• Only members of Young ITA, including academics, practitioners and students, may submit papers.
• Young ITA membership is free of charge and is limited to persons under 40 years old. Young ITA states that membership is open to all young arbitration practitioners, law students and other professionals under 40 with an interest in international arbitration, and the membership form accepts applicants from any country, including India, so Indian students, academics and practitioners under 40 can join and enter.
• One paper per person only. A person who co-authors a submitted paper may not submit any other paper.

• The paper must be the author's original work, written in English, and not published or accepted for publication by any online or print forum.
• Length: between 5,000 and 15,000 words, including footnotes (the same limit applies to a co-authored paper).
• The paper must follow a widely used citation standard.
• Submit electronically in both Word and PDF format; hard copies are not accepted.
• Author details (name, affiliation if any and contact details) go on a separate cover page for both the Word and PDF files, and must not appear in the paper itself, to allow blind review.
• Authors who use generative AI tools must disclose this on submission. AI may be used only as a supplementary aid for language editing or data processing, and must not be used to formulate, structure or lead the development of legal arguments or original analysis.
• From submission until 30 July 2027, participants must not publish or agree to publish the paper elsewhere.

Papers are judged by two panels. A First Panel of eight judges drawn from the Young ITA leadership and an ITA member selects the best three papers. A Second Panel of three judges, appointed by the Chair of the ITA Advisory Board, chooses the winner by majority, considering among other criteria the academic quality and practical utility of the papers.

• The winner receives the Young ITA Award, comprising a prize of USD 3,000, selected books published by Wolters Kluwer, and up to USD 1,500 reimbursement of reasonable expenses to travel to Texas, USA, to receive the award at the ITA Workshop and Annual Meeting in June 2027.
• The first-place paper will be published in the ITA journal, “ITA in Review”.
• The other finalist papers will be submitted to “ITA in Review” for consideration and, if approved by the Board of Editors, published in later issues. Authors will be told of the decision by 30 July 2027.

The official call sets no submission fee. Entry requires Young ITA membership, which is free of charge.

First become a Young ITA member through the membership registration form linked below. Then email the paper (Word and PDF, with a separate cover page) to ita@cailaw.org with the subject line “Young ITA Competition” (the official PDF call gives the subject line as “Young ITA Writing Competition”), on or before 12 midnight EST (US Eastern Time) on 15 January 2027, which is about 10:30 am IST on 16 January 2027. Papers may be withdrawn up to the same deadline. Indian applicants are advised to submit by 15 January 2027 IST to be safe.