Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences - KNAW Academy Education Prize

KNAW Academy Education Prize

You win a one-off prize of 2,000 EUR for your school-leaving research paper (the profielwerkstuk you write in your final VWO year). The money goes towards the tuition fees of your first year at a Dutch university or university of applied sciences, or a comparable institution abroad. You must start using it within two years of winning. Each year 12 papers win, three in each of four subject clusters: Nature and Technology, Nature and Health, Economy and Society, and Culture and Society. Your supervising teacher receives a keepsake and your school gets a KNAW plaque. The prize is run by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and co-funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

Who can apply

• Level: You are in your final (sixth) year of pre-university secondary education (VWO) at an accredited school in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• The paper: You enter your VWO profile assignment, completed as part of your final exams in the year you submit it.
• Alone or in a group: One student can write the paper, or a group of two to three students.
• Subject: Open to all four VWO profiles. The topic of your paper decides which cluster it competes in.
• Quality: Your paper is judged on the quality of its research, its originality, how well you write it up and how you reflect on the process.

How to apply

You do not enter yourself. Your teacher nominates the paper through the KNAW online portal, and each school may submit up to four papers per year. The portal for the next round opens on 6 December 2026. A pre-selection committee shortlists finalists per cluster, then a jury of KNAW members picks the three winners in each cluster.

How realistic are your chances?

Around 300 to 500 papers are submitted each year from roughly 200 schools, and only 12 win, so it is competitive at the top. Your first hurdle is inside your own school, which can put forward only four papers. If your work is genuinely strong on research method, originality and clear reflection, and your teacher backs it, you have a real shot in your cluster.