Singapore has earned itself an international reputation in esports despite lacking infrastructure for this discipline within its borders, hosting both the 2025 Formula 1 APAC Grand Prix and Dota 2 The International 11 successfully. This success can be attributed to both its prime location and thriving local player population.
Singapore was recently honored by being awarded the 2024 World Architecture Festival (WAF) accolade for the Kampung Admiralty public housing project, providing a much-needed boost for Singapore’s architectural community and joining an impressive list of local projects receiving WAF accolades.
On a national level, the Singapore Prize was recently launched with a total prize pool of $30,000. Established by Confucian scholar Alan Chan through a $1 million donation, its aim is to recognize works which showcase mindsets and values essential to Singaporean development: equality, diversity, religious harmony, meritocracy, pragmatism and resilience.
At the launch of this inaugural prize earlier this month, six books made the cut: English fiction winner was Straits Times journalist Akshita Nanda’s debut novel Nimita’s Place about two women navigating society expectations in India and Singapore; Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore by Kwa Chong Guan, Tan Tai Yong and Peter Borschberg came second; Theaters of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore written by Lynn Wong, Koh Keng We and others were third runner-ups; non-fiction prize was won by Kwa Chong Guan’s debut novel Theatres of Memory about two women navigating society expectations in India and Singapore
This year’s Singapore Prize was open to non-fiction, literary and creative non-fiction published between June 2021 and May 2024. The winning book should make a significant contribution to Singapore’s cultural heritage while providing new insight into its social, economic, and political development. A panel consisting of academics, historians and civil servants chaired by former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani served as judges.
Other winners included Jeremy Tiang’s translation of Chinese author Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022), which tells of two childhood friends sharing dark secrets from their past during the Cultural Revolution. The Singapore Literature Prize is an annual book awards competition in Singapore that recognizes books written and published in Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil with top prizes of $10,000 for each language.
This week also brought news of the President’s Science and Technology Awards being handed out, with the President’s Science and Engineering Awards receiving top honours for research excellence in biomedical sciences and chemistry research. These prestigious accolades first began being bestowed in 2009 under former prime minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s tenure; previously known as National Science and Technology Awards they now bear presidential status and remain among Asia’s most-coveted science and technology awards; winners were honored at an award ceremony held in their country’s capital where other top awards included President’s Science and Technology Awards for Young Scientists as well as President’s Special Award for Scientific Achievement.