The topic of this year’s Berggruen Prize Essay Competition is “A New Axial Age?” It follows an essay in Noema by Otto Scharmer titled, “We May Be Entering A Second Axial Age,” and a conversation with complexity scientist Stuart Kauffman titled, “Emergence Is Not Engineering.”

Karl Jaspers, the German Swiss philosopher, was known for his study of the so-called Axial Age, when the great religions, philosophical outlooks and ethical systems were born around the same time over two millennia ago — China’s Confucianism, India’s Upanishads and Buddhism, Homer’s Greece and the Hebrew prophets.

Are we poised today to undergo a similar pivotal transformation of consciousness? Might our civilization yet again be at a “hinge of history,” as Jaspers described it, in which the events that occur at this distinct point in time significantly influence our future trajectory?

Recent leaps in science and technology, notably genetic engineering, synthetic biology and artificial intelligence, are resurrecting the religious and ethical imagination as they stir anew foundational questions about our origins and destiny. Even the survival of the species is at risk due to the planetary climate crisis.

With no shared ideational framework and dwindling trust in bequeathed faiths and institutions, humanity is being forced back to first principles. The time for a synchronous global rethink appears to have arrived. Through what constituencies and platforms might this transformation transpire?

The competition awards a prize of $50,000 for essays submitted in English and Chinese. The winners are celebrated at an annual award ceremony. Winning essays will be published to give readers insight into perspectives of both East and West.

For 2026, the competition is accepting creative fiction.

Eligibility Criteria

Length: Submissions may not exceed 10,000 words in English or 15,000 characters in Chinese. This excludes diagrams, tables of data, endnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration.

Submission Limit: Entrants are limited to one submission per year, either in English or Chinese.

Co-authorship: Co-authorship is allowed.

AI Usage: Entrants must not use generative AI to create content or substitute original thought. Entrants must engage with primary sources rather than AI-generated summaries. AI may only be used in the following three cases: 1) Proofreading and grammar assistance; 2) If AI is the subject of research, entrants may include excerpts from AI-generated conversations strictly as supporting material within their argument; and 3) to translate an essay originally written in another language into either English or Chinese. To uphold intellectual integrity, all AI usage, including AI-assisted translations, must be explicitly disclosed at the front page of the submission. Failure to do so will result in disqualification.

Originality: Submissions must be original content that has not been published in any form or in any publication.

Submission Requirements: All essays must be submitted no later than 23:59 (11:59 p.m.) Pacific Time (PT) on Aug. 17. Please note that the only accepted file format for submissions is PDF.

Contact: All inquiries regarding the essay competition should be sent to [email protected].

For more details, please visit: https://berggruen.org/essay-competition-open