The BIC Art Master Africa competition is back. Now in its seventh edition, the pan-African art contest has officially opened submissions, inviting creatives from across the continent to pick up the iconic BIC Cristal ballpoint pen and put their vision of the future on paper.
This year’s theme is Tomorrow in Your Hands, a prompt that asks young Africans not merely to imagine what comes next but to claim authorship of it. It is a framing that sits comfortably within BIC’s broader brand philosophy around accessible creativity, but also one that carries real resonance for a continent where the median age sits below 20 and the conversation about who gets to shape the African future is very much alive.
Submissions are open now through the BIC Art Master Africa website, with participants given three months to complete their entries. Judging follows, with winners announced in the final quarter of 2026. The prize structure is straightforward: $2,000 for first place, $1,000 for second, and $500 for third. Beyond the cash, selected works will be featured across BIC’s art platforms, including the Art Master Africa Metaverse Gallery hosted on Spatial, giving winning pieces a digital exhibition life that extends well past the competition itself.
Seven editions in, BIC Art Master Africa has quietly built a credible record as one of the more consistent corporate art initiatives operating on the continent. The Cristal pen as the prescribed medium is a deliberate choice: it is affordable, widely available, and carries no gatekeeping. The competition’s accessibility argument is baked into the tool itself.
The metaverse gallery component, meanwhile, signals that BIC is thinking about where African creative work lives beyond the physical. Embedding competition art into a persistent digital space is a modest but meaningful step toward treating the winners as artists with portfolios rather than simply contest entries.For Kenya’s growing pool of young illustrators, sketch artists, and visual storytellers, this is a clean opportunity. No expensive materials. No institutional gatekeeping. Just a Cristal and a idea about tomorrow. The clock starts now!
