There’s one sentence in the entry rules for this year’s LGBTQ+ New Comedian of the Year that matters more than the rest. It will quietly rule out a fair chunk of the people tempted to have a go. Chortle prints the rule plainly. The competition is “open to any solo LGBTQ+ act who has been performing for less than five years and does not have an agent.” Miss that window by a few months, or sign with a management outfit last spring. Either way you’re out before you’ve written a word of your five. Entries close on 29 July, the winner takes £1,000, and the final lands at the Comedy Store in London in November.

Under five years, no agent

The under-five-years line is the bit worth reading twice, because it’s doing the actual filtering. It’s aimed at genuine newcomers. The semi-established act who’s been grinding the circuit for eight years just fancies another trophy for the shelf, and this rule keeps them out. The no-agent clause narrows it further, and honestly it’s the sharper of the two. Plenty of comics two or three years in have already picked up a bit of representation, sometimes a mate who books a room and calls it management, and that alone would bounce them from this one.

What “five years in” means in practice depends enormously on where you live. Five years in central London, where you can do three spots a night if the trains behave, is a very different CV. Five years in a town with one open mic a fortnight and a car park that shuts at eleven is another thing entirely. The rule treats them the same. Chris Smith, who runs the competition through Comedy Bloomers, framed the pitch to Beyond the Joke like this:

LGBTQ+ New Comedian of the Year was created to give talented LGBTQ+ comedians a platform to be seen, heard and celebrated.

That’s the sell. The eligibility rules are the small print that decides who actually gets to stand on the platform, and they’re worth reading before you fill in a single box on the form.

What the camera is actually for

The cash is £1,000, which for a working newcomer is real money. That’s a couple of months of petrol and open-mic travel, or a proper poster and a photographer for a debut hour. But the line in the announcement I’d circle if I were entering is that the final “will also be professionally filmed for YouTube.” A newcomer with fewer than five years of gigs behind them usually doesn’t have a clean, well-lit clip of a Comedy Store set. That tape does more heavy lifting on an application to a festival or a paid gig than the trophy ever will. A booker will click play on the clip and never once look at the certificate.

Simon Mason of the Comedy Store put the venue’s stake in it simply, telling Beyond the Joke that “Comedy thrives when fresh voices are given the opportunity to be heard, and this competition continues to uncover exceptional performers.” The Store has a habit of lending its name to newcomer schemes, and it’s not nothing to have that room on your first decent piece of tape – the low ceiling in the basement on Oxendon Street flatters a laugh in a way a function-room ceiling never does.

The final keeps changing rooms

Last year’s winner was Sydney May, taking the 2025 edition. The competition has moved around a bit: the 2024 final ran at the Clapham Grand in Battersea, judged by Jen Brister, Jonny Woo, Zoe Lyons and Daniel Foxx, hosted by former finalist Dane Buckley with previous winner Victoria Olsina headlining. This year it’s the Comedy Store, which is a step up in room prestige if a step down in ticket capacity, and tells you something about who the organisers are pitching the night at now.

Comedy Bloomers is the outfit behind it, and the whole thing lives or dies on newcomers actually finding the entry form before the 29 July cut-off. There’s no shortage of talented LGBTQ+ acts under five years in who simply won’t hear about it in time, which is the eternal problem with these things – the people it’s designed for are exactly the people not yet plugged into the industry mailing lists that carry the announcement.

A crowded July for newcomer prizes

The timing is busy. On the very day entries opened, Ashlee Bentley won Magners’ Share The Craic and a funded Edinburgh run, which is a different sort of prize – a full month of exposure rather than a single filmed set and a grand in the bank. Elsewhere this summer, Sarah Millican has put £4,000 into an Edinburgh newcomer prize, Audible is backing the Edinburgh Comedy Awards with a £10,000 top prize, and Chortle keeps running its Fast Fringe showcase to shove new names in front of paying rooms. There’s more money and platform pointed at emerging acts right now than there has been in a while, which is genuinely good news if you can find the deadlines.

For this competition specifically, the working detail is the one at the top: solo, LGBTQ+, under five years, no agent, form in by 29 July. If you tick all five and you’ve never had a proper clip of yourself on a name stage, the filmed Comedy Store set in November is the thing worth chasing – more than the grand, and certainly more than the certificate that’ll end up behind a radiator by Christmas.

Sources