History day website

How it works

The phrase does two jobs, and search boxes mash them. One job is the official site, nhd.org, where teachers download the Contest Rule Book, the year’s theme sheet, and coordinator notes. The other job is a judged category: a student website, individual or group, that has to carry a historical argument. Both uses borrow the word website. Only one of them is a project you submit. Neither one is a day off.

National History Day is a year-long contest for grades 6–12, not a month-and-day like a birthday. David Van Tassel began a local History Day in Cleveland; students competed on the Case Western Reserve campus on 11 May 1974. The national program now ends each June at the University of Maryland, College Park. The 2026 national contest ran 14–18 June under the theme Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History. That week is over. From Thursday 3 September 2026 a new cycle is in force. The 2027 theme is Innovation in History: Impact, Influence, Change.

If you landed here because you need the login, go to the program’s pages and to NHDWebCentral, the required editor. If you landed here because you need a topic, read the theme first. A handsome site about an invention that never says how it changed anyone is a poster, not an entry.

Rules that make a website an entry

Every website in the contest is built in NHDWebCentral. A personal domain, a school Google Site, or a slide deck exported as HTML is the wrong object. Pages must link to each other. The visible student-composed text is capped at 1,200 words; quoted primary material and navigation labels do not eat that cap the way body sentences do. Media is limited in the rule book, including a short total of audio and video. A process paper of 500 words or fewer and an annotated bibliography, split into primary and secondary sources, sit inside the site as required written materials.

Read the 2027 theme and the Contest Rule Book before you register a site. Open an individual or group account in NHDWebCentral, not on a private host. Argue a narrow topic: impact, influence, or change, as the topic actually supports.

Cite every image and clip on screen and again in the bibliography. Compete locally first. You do not upload straight to College Park because the editor exists. Junior division is grades 6–8. Senior is grades 9–12. Groups are two to five. Papers are a different category and cannot be a group. Do not switch category after the first contest level above the school, if that is the rule your affiliate is running; the rule book is the document, not a rumour in a group chat.

A website that only looks like a museum has failed the assignment. The argument is the exhibit; the pages are the cases.

What the name is not

It is not Constitution Day, not Independence Day, and not a Maryland public holiday just because finals meet in College Park. Federal offices stay open. A teacher who assigns NHD is assigning research, not cancelling Monday. Themes change. Do not paste a 2026 title about revolution onto a 2027 board about innovation. Coordinators hear the new theme before some classrooms do; ask which year governs your entry.

The program site will still be there in March when you have forgotten the password. Write it down. The student site you are building will be judged on historical quality first and on clarity of presentation second. Colour themes in the editor are allowed. They do not replace a thesis. If you only needed nhd.org, you now know that is the directory. If you needed the category, you now know it is a capped, cited, interconnected argument in their editor, due on your affiliate’s deadline, not on a national food-day sticker.