There is one contest that has been held every year since TFAM opened its doors, and that is Taipei Art Awards. A spinoff of the Taipei Fine Arts Exhibition, the Taipei Art Awards was originally a cultural activity organized and held by the Taipei city government. It is now has another claim to fame: the longest-running art contest funded and organized by the Taiwan government. This contest equaled in importance to the Taiwan National Exhibition and Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition.

In response to the changing times and fundamental shift in the art community, in 1996 TFAM reduced the number of categories in the contest from ten to three- 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, and applications – and limited the winners of the Taipei Art Award to three in each category, for a total 9 winners. The exhibition of winning works was then expanded to include all pieces from the same series.

In 2001 TFAM scrapped the old way of placing entries into different categories of art and began judging entries based not on the medium or application, but rather on potential and experimentation, moving the focus onto the younger generation and recognizing the “rookie of the year”. TFAM changed the name of the events to the Taipei Art Award and selected 5 winners annually. Artists not only received a monetary award, they also got to plan the exhibition themselves.

In 2009 TFAM proposed a selection process and a set of contest guidelines completely different from the model used in the past. Judging is now carried out in three rounds – preliminary, second, and final – and the artists nominated in the final round compete for the top honor by showing their work in a small-scale solo exhibition.