Entries open each autumn, when the ingredients for the paper application are announced. Once entries open, applicants are then invited to complete the registration form. If they meet the entry criteria – eg age, UK resident, hold the right qualifications – they will be sent the link to a second form with which to make their application, which includes a recipe using the specified ingredients. Applications are now closed for the 2025 competition.
Find out how the Roux Scholarship began when Michel Roux OBE founded the competition with his brother Albert. Over the last four decades it has enabled a new generation of chefs from Britain to train in the greatest restaurants in the world. Not only has it become the industry’s most acclaimed chef competition in the UK with many scholars having gone on to win Michelin stars themselves, it ranks among the most prestigious competitions for chefs in the world.
The Roux Scholarship is organised into three different stages. The most important part is the online application, which asks chefs to create a recipe using a particular set of ingredients. These applications are judged blindly to ensure complete fairness. This means the judges do not know the applicant’s identity, workplace or any personal details at all. From these applications, 18 chefs are selected to compete at the regional finals held in Birmingham and London. The most successful six chefs then go through to the national final.
The first stage of the competition is to create a recipe with a given set of ingredients, which are revealed each autumn when entries open. The first round of judging sees the recipes judged blindly, so your recipe really needs to stand out to get noticed. It should be formatted clearly on a Pdf document (or other word-processing file) with the costs included in a table at the bottom, and then uploaded as part of our entry form before the January deadline. Click here to see an example of how it should be presented.
