Australia’s most recognisable portrait prize, the Archibald Prize 2025, will be touring to Mudgee for the first time. Mudgee Arts Precinct will be hosting the prize from 20 March – 3 May 2026.
The Archibald Prize for portrait painting is Australia’s most celebrated and democratic sometimes controversial art award. The trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales judge the entries and the winner receives $100,000. First awarded in 1921, the Archibald Prize was established following a bequest from former Art Gallery trustee and founder of The Bulletin magazine JF Archibald (1856–1919), whose aim was to foster portraiture, support artists and perpetuate the memory of great Australians.
The open competition has been awarded annually (with two exceptions: 1964 and 1980) to the best portrait, ‘preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in arts, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia’. Entries to the Archibald Prize must be painted in the past year from at least one live sitting.
The Young Archie Competition is being hosted alongside the Archibald Prize for the first time in our region. Celebrating the talented young artists of the Mid-Western Region, the Young Archie competition has run alongside the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales since 2013, inviting artists between the ages of 2 and 18 to submit a portrait ‘of someone who is special to them and plays a significant role in their life’. There are five age categories in Mudgee Arts Precinct’s Young Archie competition: Preschool: 2–4 years, 5–8 years, 9–12 years,13–15 years and 16–18 years.
Each Young Archie competition is judged on merit and originality. The judges for the region’s inaugural Young Archie Competition will be local artists Sam Paine, Kim Harding and the Mudgee Art Precinct’s Gallery Curator, Lizzy Galloway.
Both exhibitions will be on display from 20 March to 3 May 2026. An exhibition walk-through will take place on Friday, 20 March at 5pm, followed by the official exhibition opening.
Archibald Prize 2025 is an Art Gallery of New South Wales touring exhibition. Find out more about each of this year’s Archibald Prize finalists here: artgallery.nsw.au/prizes/Archibald/2025
Mudgee Arts Precinct is open seven days a week from 9am to 5pm. Entry is free.
