Theme and Topics
Chicago Metro History Day
The annual National History Day® contest theme is designed to help you think of a topic from any aspect of local, regional, national, or world history. With this focus, you can begin to ask questions that your research will help you answer, including how your topic is significant in history.
2027 NHD Theme: “Innovation in History: Impact, Influence, Change”
Innovation goes beyond creating new tools or devices to finding new ways of thinking, organizing, and influencing society. To put it simply, innovation, at its core, is about change and the impact of that change.
To fully explore innovation in a historical context, we must look beyond the idea itself and examine its effects. How did people, over time, imagine, develop, and implement new ideas, technologies, or methods? And in what ways did those innovations influence societies?
Explore the Theme
- Theme Narrative (PDF, excerpted from 2027 NHD Theme Book) to start thinking about the theme
- 2027 NHD Theme Book (PDF)
- NHD 2027 SPARK Test Worksheet (PDF) to determine whether a topic is a good fit
- 2027 NHD Theme Video: Innovation in History
- The NHD Theme page has even more resources
- CMHD created a website with potential topics and starter sources for those topics. Visit to get ideas and start your project today!
*Please note that there is no contest requirement for CMHD projects to relate to local (Chicago or Illinois) topics. However, your teacher may put restrictions on what topics are acceptable at the classroom level.