Entering its seventh season in 2026, the De Men (Cricket) Children’s Awards, founded by The Thao & Van Hoa (Sports & Culture) newspaper under the Vietnam News Agency, continues to demonstrate the enduring vitality of a prestigious award in Vietnam’s literary and artistic landscape.

The De Men Children’s Awards ceremony will take place on May 22 afternoon at the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum.

Maintaining strong professional standards, this year’s edition also mark a clearer ambition to elevate their stature, in line with the spirit of the Politburo’s Resolution No. 80-NQ/TW on developing Vietnamese culture in the new era.

From 146 entries reviewed and assessed, the jury selected a top 10 shortlist spanning a wide range of creative genres, including novels, poetry, painting, comics, musicals, animation and multi-platform creative models. Notably, this year’s edition features the prominent participation of four young authors among the finalists.

According to poet Tran Dang Khoa, chairman of the judging panel, the number of submissions this year is considerable, with a relatively even overall quality and many outstanding works for children.

Alongside familiar names such as Nguyen Ngoc Thuan and Ta Huy Long, the awards also welcomed many new contributors, particularly young writers and child artists whose creations displayed rich imagination and distinctive artistic personalities.

In its seventh season, De Men continues to affirm its openness by moving beyond the traditional boundaries of literature.

The inclusion of the musical “Phep mau cua Kurt” (Kurt’s miracle), the Wolfoo animated series and a digital creative ecosystem among the top 10 finalists reflects the awards’ growing engagement with contemporary creative life and their expansion into theatre, cinema, animation and digital platforms.

Beyond their diversity in form, this year’s works also capture the pulse of modern life through themes such as artificial intelligence, digital technology and the relationship between humans and the technological world.

Nevertheless, the entries still preserve the core values of children’s literature and arts: nurturing emotions, imagination and humanistic ideals.

Another highlight of the seventh edition is an ambition to raise the awards’ profile in accordance with the Politburo’s Resolution No. 80-NQ/TW and the Party Central Committee Secretariat’s Directive No. 04-CT/TW on strengthening the Party’s leadership over publishing activities in the new context.

De Men no longer limited to discovering and honouring works “by children” or “for children”, but are also moving towards building a cultural and artistic ecosystem for them in the digital age.

This includes promoting promising works into cultural industry products capable of reaching a broader audience, thereby contributing to reading culture and the spiritual life of younger generations.

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