The 2025 Erarta Prize Has Been Awarded

The closing gala event of the 2025 Erarta Prize took place on 4 June. The nominated artists, the viewers, Erarta team members, and members of the press assembled at Erarta’s Grand Hall for the announcement of the project’s final results. The total prize value of 3.5 million rubles was distributed among the 40 nominees according to the viewers’ vote.

The first edition of this large-scale project took place in 2023: the Erarta Prize was inaugurated as the first ever contemporary art prize awarded through a public vote rather than by a closed board of experts.

In 2025, following an open call for entries, the museum’s team selected a total of 40 Prize nominees. Their artworks were showcased at a special exhibition organised to determine the winners through a public viewer vote. The 2025 Erarta Prize exhibition featured paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, installations, photographs, as well as other contemporary art media.

Over the span of four months, exhibition visitors voted for their favourite artworks in two voting rounds. The voting procedure was completely transparent: everyone could monitor the actual distribution of votes between the artists in real time by looking at the screens installed in the exhibition space and see their own votes being counted. Every vote was extremely important for the artists: by supporting the artwork of their choice, the viewers offered its creator a chance to win a bigger prize and ultimately compete for the Grand Prix of 500,000 rubles.

In the course of the first voting round that lasted through 21 April, the viewers visiting the Prize nominees’ exhibition over the span of ten weeks had given the majority of votes to the 10 artists who were then shortlisted for the second round. The second voting round that came to a close on 4 June determined the final prize distribution as follows:

Grand Prix, 500,000 rubles – Konstantin Alekseyev

2nd place, 200,000 rubles – Ilya Gurko

3rd place, 175,000 rubles – Sergey Kozhara

4th place, 150,000 rubles – Olga Petrova

5th place, 125,000 rubles – Yulia Trubina

6th place, 100,000 rubles – Aleksey Vorobyov & Ekaterina Stoycheva

7th place, 100,000 rubles – Aleksey Golovin

8th place, 100,000 rubles – Sofia Yalalova

9th place, 100,000 rubles – Ivan Pokidyshev

10th place, 100,000 rubles – Matvey Körn

Erarta Museum would like to thank everyone who took an active part in determining the winners of the 2025 Erarta Prize. Together we could carry through this one-of-a-kind project that perfectly embodies the museum’s core values and is bound to continue.

Details of the next open call for entries will be announced in the autumn of 2025: stay tuned to our website erarta.com and Erarta’s social media for updates.

See you at the 2026 Erarta Prize!