The best thing about ArcGIS StoryMaps is that it provides an easy-to-use tool for telling stories about the world we live in — and the world we want to see. With three million stories published and counting, the impact that storytellers can have on a virtually infinite range of topics never fails to inspire us on Esri’s StoryMaps team.

Each year, the ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition encourages storytellers to submit their work and ultimately showcases some truly remarkable examples of how ArcGIS StoryMaps can be used to inform readers, achieve goals, and ultimately make the world a better place. We’re expecting the 2025 competition — now accepting submissions through December 12 — to be no exception.

If you’re even remotely thinking about tossing your hat into the ring, 1) do it! And 2) keep reading this blog post to get the lowdown on all you need to know before entering: The competition format resources available to help you along the way, and, perhaps most importantly, who will be determining the winners and what they’ll be looking for in a winning story.

How does the competition work?

Esri invites anyone who is at least 18 years old to submit one original story or collection (that has not been submitted to a prior ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition) that uses data or maps from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World to tell a place-based story.

Entrants (as individuals or groups of people) will be asked to submit their story under one of three categories:

• People
• Environment
• Infrastructure

For more information on each of these categories, plus resources to inspire you and help get you started, visit the 2025 ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition hub site.

Entrants who are enrolled in a two-year or four-year institution of higher education also have the option to have their story placed in a student track under each category so that their story will be judged against other student submissions.

Rules for submission (IMPORTANT!)

Although you’re probably excited to get your story or collection submitted, it is critical to not overlook the basic submission requirements, including (but not limited to):

• Make sure you are using ArcGIS StoryMaps and that you are not using a free public ArcGIS account to create your submission.
• Your story or collection must use data or maps from the Living Atlas (this can range from as simple as using Living Atlas basemaps underneath your data to plugging in and analyzing some of the Living Atlas’ own curated data or maps).
• Make sure that your story or collection — and all the content within it (web maps and the layers they contain, other ArcGIS apps, etc.) — are published publicly. Suddenly getting a login prompt while reading a story is a big no-no. It’s highly recommended to test your story on in multiple browsers and even mobile devices to confirm.
• If you’ve already submitted an entry to the 2025 ArcGIS StoryMaps competition, you may not submit another one (this applies to organizations that are submitting, as well as individuals/groups).
• If you’re submitting to the student track and worked on your submission with a group, all story authors must also be students.

For all the fine print, you can read the rules in full here. Not following any of the submission requirements can be grounds for an entry not being accepted, so it cannot be stressed enough how important it is to get these little things right the first time.

How do winners get selected and what do they get?

Esri’s StoryMaps team will review eligible submissions  and select up to ten finalists and five student finalists in each of the three categories. From those finalists, our guest judges will then choose one winner and one student winner in each category. (Check out this blog post to learn about who the judges are and to register for a webinar on November 20 where you can pick their brains before submitting your entry!)

On top of that, there will be three special awards:

• The Community Choice Award will be determined via public vote of the finalists;
• The Storytelling With Maps Innovation Award will be selected by the StoryMaps team from among the finalists based on who we feel most demonstrates excellence and creativity in integrating other Esri GIS products and applications into their story.
• The Living Atlas Innovation Award will recognize exceptional use of Esri technology and showcase the latest mapping and analytical capabilities in ArcGIS, demonstrating how innovative tools and techniques can elevate storytelling and spatial insight.

All winners will receive an official Esri certificate, get featured on the Esri website and in an interview, and receive an award at Esri’s 2026 User Conference. Each winner may accept a voucher for an Esri Technical Certification Exam: one (1) per individual or two (2) per team. Each category winner only will receive a printed copy of the Esri Press book Telling Stories with Maps: one (1) per individual or three (3) per team.

What are the judges looking for?

And there it is, the million dollar question: What makes a story stand out amongst the hundreds of entries the ArcGIS StoryMaps competition typically receives? We’ve provided the judges with three deliberately broad criteria with which to examine each story:

• Overall design, impact, and originality
• Innovative use of GIS and the ArcGIS StoryMaps product
• Support of the competition and category theme

While we can’t speak for our judges and how they’ll ultimately approach their task, we can provide some advice and rules of thumb based on how we see the competition judging unfold year in and year out.

Overall design, impact, and originality

Stories should be well-written and well-organized, at a minimum, but here are a couple of ways to go above and beyond in creating a story that really stands out.

Be creative and thoughtful in your approach.

Whatever you’re covering in your story, we know you’re passionate about it, so let that passion shine through in a creative and memorable way. Remember that your audience likely doesn’t know nearly as much about the topic as you do, so take that into account as you’re constructing your narrative.

Sometimes, all it takes is an unorthodox approach to really pull readers in; Crossing Nets, one of the student winners from 2024, was told from the point-of-view of a sea turtle facing the threat of unintended capture. Using first-person narration by a non-human character was unusual, but really stuck in our heads!

Don’t sleep on the visual language.

You could have an award-worthy story, full of impressive maps and GIS applications, with a captivating narrative to go along with them, but it may not make as much of an initial impression if the way the story looks is falling flat. We can tell when deliberate thought has been put into tying the story’s visual elements together in a cohesive way that adds to the overall storytelling experience, and it goes a long way toward elevating already-good stories.

It’s not coincidental that nearly every winner in 2024 used a custom theme to complement their story content. Especially impressive was the Tucson Equity Priority Index, which paired a pleasant custom theme with simple illustrations to help make a data-forward story feel accessible and engaging to a wide audience. That theme is also tied to the maps, charts, and infographics throughout, creating a unified look and feel.

Innovative use of GIS and the ArcGIS StoryMaps product

This criteria focuses on how well the submission incorporates the geospatial element — not just through technical use of GIS applications and ArcGIS StoryMaps itself, but also in terms of how those technologies are actively used as narrative-building tools.

Show that you really know the story builder.

ArcGIS StoryMaps has not stopped growing as a product since it was released in 2019, with updates at least once a month to add more features and enhancements for storytellers to take advantage of. With so many options to choose from when building a story, however, it’s normal for some analysis paralysis to creep in. In our experience, the most exemplary stories all demonstrate that the storyteller has really gotten to know the ArcGIS StoryMaps builder.

And while it’s great to see all the different blocks put to good use, it’s clear when the use of those blocks has more of a “button-mashing” feel to it — throwing everything you can into a story just to prove that you can. It’s important to technically know how to use all the blocks, but it’s just as important to know when it makes the most sense to use each block in the context of your story. 2024’s winner of the Storytelling with Maps Innovation Award, Discovering San Juan Island’s Natural Diversity, predominantly uses one block — sidecar — throughout the entire story. But the way those sidecar blocks are used creatively — balancing images, audio, and maps, switching between two-dimensional and three-dimensional views of a map, employing techniques like map choreography and features like media actions, etc. — ensures that the story is immersive and engaging without ever feeling repetitive.

Integrate your GIS work — but be careful not to overwhelm.

We love when storytellers are excited to show off their GIS work in ArcGIS StoryMaps. It’s a big reason that the embed functionality exists, in fact, allowing you to easily pull other ArcGIS applications directly into a story. Dashboards, experience builder, and Survey123 are just a few of the ways you can augment a story with the power of GIS tools. But don’t lose sight of the purpose of your story; ask yourself, for instance, whether that Dashboard is going to actually help convey your key messages or whether it’s liable to be a distracting rabbit hole in the middle of the story.

One possible approach is to save your most in-depth GIS integration until near the end of the story. Let your audience dive as deep as they want into your data and outcomes, but only after they’ve read your whole story — and hopefully gained some important context that will only help them further understand an exploratory GIS element that might otherwise be overwhelming and disruptive to the flow of the story if placed earlier on. The 2024 Nature and Physical Science category winner, Charting a Path to Human-Elephant Co-existence in Tanzania, embeds a Dashboard as one of the final components of the story, ensuring that it won’t derail the story if a reader decides to stop and explore.

Support of the competition and category theme

Simply put, the judges need to see a clear approach in terms of what the submission is attempting to accomplish (besides just winning the competition), including a major takeaway or call to action. Then, there needs to be strong substance in support of that approach: evidence of thoughtful research, data analysis, and data visualization.

Cross your T’s and dot your I’s.

For the most part, this should be the easiest category to get right. We believe that everyone — and every place — has a story to tell, and those stories together all make up the immense tapestry that is our world. Whichever thread in that tapestry is the one you want to pull, there’s more than enough room for it in the ArcGIS StoryMaps competition.

First and foremost, make sure you’re following the competition rules when you submit your story (outlined earlier in this post). But beyond that, also make sure that you have permission to use all of the content in your story if that content doesn’t belong to you. Use of copyrighted material without permission can be disqualifying, so leave those movie GIFs at the door.

Above all else…

…have fun!

If you’re looking for more inspiration and guidance on building an exemplary story, once again, the competition home page is a good place to start. There, you’ll find galleries of past winners so you can see the kinds of stories that have caught the judges’ attention in the past. You’ll also see a link to the hub site, which contains numerous resources that are specific to each category in the competition.

Be creative and enthusiastic, and we can’t wait to see your stories in the submission inbox soon!