The Horizon Academic Essay Prize is a selective essay contest for high school students from around the world. Each essay will be evaluated by Horizon’s Academic Advisory Board, composed of faculty from top institutions like Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. The theme for the 2026 edition is “The Pursuit of Progress”, and requires participants to submit a well-researched essay. Last year, ~ 2,000 students entered from around the world, and winners were awarded $474.5K in cash prizes and scholarships.As a contestant, you will be required to engage with any one of these 5 questions that feed into this central theme: How can mental health be better integrated into public policy and social norms to create an environment where individuals can pursue true psychological progress?How could bio-hacking impact society, and what regulations or guidelines should be put in place to ensure it is practiced safely and ethically?How should lawmakers and tech developers balance the need for public safety with the protection of individual rights?How do these movements challenge existing power structures, and what role do they play in bringing about long-term social change?Submissions must take the form of a formal academic essay, written in English, and should include a clear thesis, structured argumentation, engagement with relevant sources, and critical analysis of competing viewpoints. The competition encourages depth over breadth, and will reward essays that pursue a well-defined line of inquiry with originality and nuance. Entries are judged on five criteria: originality, depth of analysis, use of evidence, structure and coherence, and clarity of language.