Theme and Topics

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.

2024 NHD Theme: “Turning Points in History”

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, NHD’s theme will be “Turning Points in History.” This year’s theme invites you to consider questions of time and place, cause and effect, change over time, and impact and significance.

A turning point in history is more than just an important event that happened a long time ago. It is more than a new idea or a particular action taken by an individual. A turning point is an idea, event, or action that directly, or sometimes indirectly, causes change.

Explore the Theme

• Theme Narrative (PDF, excerpted from 2024 NHD Theme Book) to start thinking about the theme
• 2024 NHD Theme Book (PDF)
• “Turning Points in History” Graphic Organizer (PDF)
• 2024 NHD Theme Video: Turning Points in History
• The NHD Theme page has even more resources
• CMHD Topics Guide page
• Turning Points in Latino/a/x History: Public History as National History Day Model (PDF)

*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.