Poetry Slam, Inc. promotes national slam championship competitions in three formats to serve different elements of the slam community. PSI handles registrations for the teams and directs the overall tournament while the slam teams in NPS host cities arrange the performance venues and staff for the competitions.
Each of the following events is the centerpiece of international gatherings staged in different cities once each year.
The National Poetry Slam (NPS) is a competition between teams of four to five poets which tend to represent specific hosts, venues or cities. The multi-day tournament works by holding elimination slams to elevate the winners to higher and higher levels until the top teams emerge to meet for a final competition at which the year’s champion slam team is crowned.
Recent National Poetry Slam champion teams were:
| 2012 at Charlotte, NC | Slam New Orleans from New Orleans, LA |
| 2013 at Cambridge, MA | Slam New Orleans from New Orleans, LA |
| 2014 at Oakland, CA | D.C. Beltway Poetry Slam from greater Washington, DC |
| 2015 at Oakland, CA | The House Slam from Boston, MA |
| 2016 at Decatur, GA | Slammageddon from Baltimore, MD |
The Individual World Poetry Slam (iWPS) is a competition among individual poets, not teams. There are two days of preliminary rounds during which poets compete with one, two, three and four minute poems. The top twelve poets then compete in a final bout with three-minute poems.
Recent Individual World Poetry Slam champions were:
| 2012 at Fayetteville, AR | Ed Mabrey |
| 2013 at Spokane, WA | Ed Mabrey and Chancelior “Xero” Skidmore (tie) |
| 2014 at Phoenix, AZ | Porsha O |
| 2015 at Washington, DC | Emi Mahmoud |
| 2016 at Flagstaff, AZ | Ed Mabrey (again!) |
The Women of the World Poetry Slam (WOWps) is a competition among only individual women poets and those that identify as women. Just as with the iWPS, there are two days of preliminary rounds during which poets compete with one, two, three and four minute poems. The top twelve poets then compete in a final bout with three-minute poems.
Recent Women of the World Poetry Slam champions were:
| 2012 at Denver, CO | Dominique Ashaheed |
| 2013 at Minneapolis, MN | Denice Frohman |
| 2014 at Austin, TX | Dominique Ashaheed |
| 2015 at Albuquerque, NM | Janae Johnson |
| 2016 at Brooklyn, NY | Imani Cezanne and Emi Mahmoud (tie) |