NHSEB 2026-2027: Season Launch
Dear NHSEB Community,
Today, the National High School Ethics Bowl will kick off its 2026-2027 Season with the release of a new and exciting Regional Case Set, the opening of school registration, and the opening of application portals for some of our yearly initiatives!
I am incredibly proud of our community, and of the work that you all do to prepare to be the next generation of leaders.
Ethics Bowl helps students to develop the skills that allow them to be effective and successful members of our democracy and I am always inspired by it’s transformative power. High school students are already important members of society, and it can feel as though they are expected to know intrinsically how to engage with challenging topics or alternative beliefs constructively. Our activity is designed to equip participants to take on these challenges—not only as students, but as full members of social and political communities. Our goal is not merely to teach students to reason about and discuss moral and political issues. It is to teach them to do this hard work responsibly, constructively, and most importantly, together. The reasoning and communication skills that you are learning and teaching here are vital and more valuable now than ever before.
Thank you for being a part of the NHSEB community. It is a true privilege to work with you all and I cannot wait to hear the conversations that come from this year’s season!
Below we have compiled a few important reminders for the beginning of our season together. Please review them as your register your events and teams and get started for 2026-2027, and don't hesitate to reach out to my team (ethicsbowl@unc.edu) if you have any questions or concerns we can be of assistance with.
All the best,
Leo Kirby
School Registration and Fees
Coaches, you can now register your schools with the NHSEB for the 2025-2026 season!
For official recognition and to get started competitively, an Ethics Bowl team should complete a two-step registration process. These steps should generally be completed in the following order:
Teams should first register with their geographically closest Regional Competition by contacting its Organizer(s). NHSEB Regionals typically occur between January 1 and early February of a given school year, but they DO fill up, and that isn’t always reflected on the national registration portal. A full list of contact information for NHSEB Regional Organizers is available here.
All teams participating in the NHSEB program must register with NHSEB HQ each season, and pay a yearly registration fee. The registration fee for 2026-2027 is $175, if schools register before November 1, 2026. After November 1, fees will increase to $250. All payments must be completed by January 15, 2027. As always, NHSEB HQ is committed to ensuring that no team is prevented from participating because of financial need. Therefore, financial assistance and/or fee waivers are available for teams who qualify as part of the NHSEBBridge initiative. For more information or to request a fee waiver, contact NHSEB. Schools may register and pay their fees here.
2026-2027 regional Case Set
The 2026-2027 Regional Case Set is now live!
This year’s case set features some cases from our NHSEB Student Case Competition.
If you are a High School student who’s currently involved with the NHSEB, we would love to hear about the topics that you find most interesting!
The NHSEB Case Competition is an opportunity for high school students all across the country to write cases for the National High School Ethics Bowl. All cases submitted by eligible students will be considered for publication and competitive use in NHSEB’s Regional and National Case Sets. The winning case will be guaranteed publication in an NHSEB regional case set.
We now accept submissions to the case competition year-round. With a rolling deadline of February 28, 2027. If you submit after the deadline, don’t worry! Your case will be considered in the following year’s competition.
The winner of the NHSEB Case Competition will receive a prize of $500, and each honorable mention will receive a prize of $250. ALL submissions will be considered for future case sets but, the winner of the case competition will be guaranteed publication in a regional case set following the competition.
COach of the year nominations
Nominations are now open for the National High School Ethics Bowl’s 2027 Coach of the Year Award. Nominations may be submitted in written form (with a maximum length of 500 words), or via a short video narrative (with a maximum length of 3 minutes). Nominations will be accepted through February 28, 2027. All nominations will be reviewed by NHSEB’s Special Committee on Equity, Access, and Community, and winners will be announced at the 2026 National Championship Awards Ceremony in Chapel Hill.
Established in 2023, the Coach of the Year Award is designed to celebrate the extraordinary impact educators have on the Ethics Bowl activity. It annually recognizes the Ethics Bowl Coach who most clearly and consistently expresses and promotes our program’s core values: dialogue over disagreement, reasoning over rhetoric, and an appreciation for moral nuance wherever it exists. Teachers make the activity what it is, and all that NHSEB students accomplish would scarcely be possible without their effort and example. Winners receive an official citation, a commemorative plaque, and a $500 honorarium to aid in the development of Ethics Bowl programming at their schools.
Coming Soon:
Finally, please be on the lookout for our upcoming digital tools that we will be releasing to help manage your NHSEB team and event experience!
We hope to not only improve the experience of an NHSEB competition event, but also to create a space where students can engage more with the NHSEB outside of competition. We will be circulating more information in the coming months, and will show off the beta demo at the end of this year!