Entries: 1068 (55 selected)
Presenting partner: ANZ
Exhibition dates: 26 September to 10 January 2021
Only selected finalists were exhibited; each artist could submit only one work
Records were broken again. The number of entries hit an all-time high. Among the finalists, there were eight Indigenous artists and ten Indigenous sitters – and, for the first time, Indigenous artists won the Packing Room Prize (awarded to Meyne Wyatt) and the Archibald Prize (awarded to Vincent Namatjira).
This was after a delay in the competition due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Entry submissions were suspended for a period and the exhibition was postponed. Subsequently the eligibility periods of both the work and the artist (which are based around the date of the delivery of entries) were extended.