YAC Dig It! Competition 2026!

Our annual Dig It! competition is back for 2026, and this year, you could work alongside archaeologists at some amazing sites right across the UK!

During their Dig It! with YAC day, our winners will have the opportunity to experience a range of field-based tasks such as digging, washing finds, and learning other archaeological skills too – in fact, they’ll learn what being an archaeologist is really like!

Three winners aged between 8 and 16 will be chosen for each site. 

We’ll be sharing the details of the individual competitions for each site in the next few months.

 

Travel Bursaries and Toolkits

Every winner will have access to a Dig It! bursary to help cover the costs of travel, accommodation and/or subsistence (your lunch!). This has been made possible by the Marsh Charitable Trust, who are once again sponsoring the bursaries. These bursaries are designed to break down barriers to participation by helping cover the cost of attending for young people engaging with archaeology, making it easier for them to take part in life-changing fieldwork opportunities.

Thanks to this generous support, we can open up access to archaeological experiences for even more young people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to get involved.

And that’s not all… each of our winners will receive a fantastic haversack of archaeological tools from our friends at Past Horizons, complete with their own trowel!

Keep an eye out for competition blogs in the next few months with instructions on how to enter! 

A young person kneeling on the ground in a field scraping the soil with a metal trowel.

Dig It! Competition Dig Diaries

Each year, we ask our winners if they can keep a Dig Diary about their experiences, so we can share their adventures with their fellow YAC members.

We get to learn all about their experiences: what they learned, what they enjoyed and the amazing things they have discovered!!!

Why not read our latest Dig Diary from Lukas and Jennie, both YAC members at The Sill who visited Ancrum Mantle Walls in The Scottish Borders for their Dig It! Day.

Dig Diaries 2025 – Ancrum Mantle Walls