"Hangul Festa 2026" Receives 385 Entries from 58 Countries... Up 53% from Previous Year
A Total of 99 Winning Works Announced
Italian-Language Entry Wins "Sejong Award"
Vietnamese and Spanish-Language Entries Take First Prize
The Hangul Nuri Foundation, sponsored by Kyungdong Navien, announced on the 7th that a total of 385 entries from 58 countries, using 55 languages, were submitted to the "Hangul Festa 2026" contest. This represents an increase of approximately 53% compared to the previous year.
Hangul Festa is a contest held annually since 2023, where participants create videos using Hangul or "Nuri Hangul" to express stories about diverse cultures around the world. The Hangul category requires participants to use the modern Hangul script system, which consists of 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels. The Nuri Hangul category asks participants to represent the sounds of their language using the "Nuri Hangul" orthographic proposals for four languages, as developed by the Hangul Nuri Foundation.
"Nuri Hangul" is a writing system suggested by Hangul Nuri that is based on the creation principles and letter shapes of Hunminjeongeum, designed to allow the sounds of various world languages to be transcribed in Hangul. Its notable feature is the structuring of compound vowels—such as diphthongs or triphthongs—by writing the following vowel in a smaller size to reflect the pronunciation order.
The contest, held over three months from May to August this year, saw participation from a wide range of language communities, including Nepali (Nepal), Slovenian (Slovenia), Khmer (Cambodia), Kom (Cameroon), and Tumbuka (Malawi), further expanding linguistic diversity. In particular, the Nuri Hangul category saw various attempts to accurately capture the unique sounds of each language, demonstrating the potential of Hangul to encompass a broad range of global languages.
Hangul Nuri announced a total of 99 winning works, considering criteria such as the originality and consistency of the participant-submitted notations, as well as the artistic quality of the videos. Among them, the "Sejong Award," given to the most outstanding work across both the Hangul and Nuri Hangul categories, was awarded to Claudia Piccioni of Italy, who participated in the Nuri Hangul category with an Italian-language project. The first prize went to Ha Hai Anh from Vietnam, who participated in Vietnamese, and Pamela Elizabeth Coloma Ribadeneira from Ecuador, who participated in Spanish.
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A representative from Hangul Nuri stated, "The fact that the top awardee emerged from Italy, the home of the Roman alphabet, demonstrates that Hangul Festa has become a truly global festival that transcends linguistic and cultural boundaries, welcoming and engaging participants from around the world. Going forward, Hangul Nuri will continue to use Hangul Festa to connect diverse languages and cultures, expanding the potential of Hangul as a universal script."
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