1 Billion Followers Summit AI Film Award 2027: How to Enter the $1M Seedance Prize by Nov 20

At least 70% of the finished film has to be generated with ByteDance's Seedance. Every entry must take on one of five themes about people and society, and the Top 5 premiere at the summit in Dubai on January 8 to 10, 2027, where the winner is announced.

It is the largest single cash prize open to AI filmmakers right now. PixLight's $300,000 pool is split across 33 awards, and AKOOL's $500,000 is paid as creator rewards. This one goes to one person. Everything below comes from the official rules at 1billionsummit.com/ai-award-2027, read on October 18, 2026, plus the Khaleej Times launch report of September 30 and the January 2026 coverage of last year's winner.

The Rules in One Place

The official page lists these requirements:

Prize: $1,000,000 to one Grand Prize winner, paid by bank transfer within 60 days of the announcement after eligibility and identity checks. The winner pays any tax due.

Who can enter: anyone 18 or older at submission, anywhere in the world. Entry is free. You may send more than one film, but each one is a separate application.

The film: one original work made for this award that tells one complete story, 5 to 7 minutes long, horizontal 16:9 at 1080p, delivered as MOV or MP4. Any language is fine, but English subtitles are required. The organizer's intro card, downloadable from the rules page, goes before your film.

The AI rule: Seedance must be the primary video-generation tool and must generate at least 70% of the final film. Other AI tools and post-production software can support it, and original live-action footage is allowed as long as the 70% threshold still holds. Responsible, ethical AI use is a mandatory condition of entry but is not scored.

Rights: you keep full ownership and copyright. The organizer gets a non-exclusive licence to screen, share, archive and promote the film for judging, the summit and publicity.

The Five Themes

Your film has to speak to one of these, word for word from the rules:

Society, Community & Humanitarian Issues. Truth, Fake News & Misinformation. Humans & AI. Climate, Nature & Our Changing Planet. Human Relationships.

The summit itself runs under a "content for good" banner, which is why the list reads like a public-interest brief. Two of these themes deserve a second look. Humans & AI will be the most crowded, because it is the obvious choice for a film made by an AI model, and a jury watching hundreds of robot-meets-human shorts will have seen your twist before. Human Relationships is the quietest theme on paper, and the one where a small, character-led story has the most room to stand out. Truth, Fake News & Misinformation is the interesting middle ground: it lets you use what generative video does well, faces and footage that look real, as the subject of the film instead of a trick.

How the $1 Million Film Gets Picked

The rules score each film out of 100:

AI Integration: 30%. Storytelling: 30%. Creativity & Aesthetic: 20%. Technical Execution: 20%.

The expert committee picks a Top 10 on storytelling, originality, character development, structure, visual creativity and use of Seedance. The jury is described only as "an expert international committee" and no names are published. On December 15 the Top 10 go to a public vote. The Top 5 are announced on December 25, and the Grand Prize is announced at the premiere in Dubai. The rules page gives January 8 to 10 for the premiere and announcement; its FAQ is more specific, with the premiere on January 9 and the winner on January 10. The page does not say how much the public vote counts against the jury score, so do not plan around a social campaign. Plan around the 60% that is AI Integration plus Storytelling.

"AI Integration" at 30% is the line most entrants will misread. It does not mean the most shots or the flashiest generations. Read with the 70% rule and the "use of Seedance" criterion, it rewards films where the generation choices serve the story: a performance held across cuts, a world that could not be shot any other way, a camera move that carries meaning. Disclose your workflow honestly on the form; step three of the submission asks how the film was made and which AI tools you used.

What Last Year's Winner Tells You

This is the award's second edition. The first, run with Google Gemini, was won in January 2026 by Tunisian filmmaker Zoubeir Jlassi for Lily, presented by Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the summit. Per Khaleej Times and Gulf News, that edition drew 3,500 film submissions, with more than 30,000 people from 116 countries registering interest. A jury of 40 experts cut the field to 100 films, then 12, then a final five. Entries had to be at least 70% made with Google's generative AI tools, the same threshold now applied to Seedance.

Lily is not a spectacle film. Gulf News summarises the plot: a lonely archivist commits a hit-and-run, a doll gets stuck on his car bumper, and the doll becomes a link to the injured child that pushes him to confess to the police and return it to her in hospital. Guilt, one character, one object, one decision. That is a short-film structure any festival programmer would recognise, and it won $1 million with AI-generated images.

Two things changed for 2027. The tool is now Seedance, with BytePlus (ByteDance's enterprise arm) organising and TikTok supporting. And there is a runtime window of 5 to 7 minutes, so plan your structure for that window from day one.

Planning a 6-Minute Seedance Film

The 70% rule sets your minimum. At 5 minutes you need 3 minutes 30 seconds of Seedance-generated footage; at 7 minutes you need 4 minutes 54 seconds. Seedance 2.0 generates clips of up to 15 seconds each, so even a 6-minute film needs dozens of generations, and in practice several times that once you count retakes for continuity.

A workable shape for a solo creator: aim for about 6 minutes, which leaves room on both sides of the window. Write a one-page treatment with a single lead, a clear want and an ending that lands on your theme. Lock a character sheet and a look bible before you generate anything, because continuity of the lead across 30 or more shots is where AI shorts usually fall apart, and the Storytelling and Technical Execution scores both depend on it. Keep a log of which shots are Seedance, which are other tools, and which are live action, so you can show the 70% split if asked.

Sound counts toward Technical Execution even though the rules do not mention it. Use a voice tool such as ElevenLabs for dialogue only if your rights to the voice are clean, and score with licensed or original music. English subtitles are mandatory, even for an English-language film: the private or unlisted link you submit must play the finished film with them.

Where to access Seedance: the official page credits BytePlus as the company behind Dreamina Seedance. Third-party hosts also sell access to the model. Segmind, for example, has published an AI Film Award 2027 landing page while stating plainly that it is "not an organiser, sponsor or partner." Use whichever access you like, but take the rules only from 1billionsummit.com.

The Odds, and Why It Is Still Worth Entering

Be realistic about the numbers. Last year 3,500 films competed for five final slots, about one in 700. With TikTok promoting the 2027 edition and Seedance access widely available, the field could be larger. A Top 10 place still earns public-vote exposure on a TikTok-backed platform, and a Top 5 place means a premiere in Dubai in front of a summit that Khaleej Times says will host more than 500 speakers.

The cost side is small. Entry is free, and the 5 to 7 minute film you make is yours to keep, subject only to the non-exclusive promotional licence. The real cost is generation credits and about five weeks of evenings. That is the same budget most AI filmmakers spend on a short they send to paid festivals anyway, and here the upside is $1 million.

Five Mistakes That Sink an Entry

Running long or short. A 7:20 cut or a 4:45 cut fails a written requirement. The rules do not say whether the intro card counts toward the runtime, so keep the film itself inside 5 to 7 minutes with a few seconds of margin.

Missing the 70% threshold. Heavy live-action plates or another video model doing the hero shots can push Seedance under 70%. Keep the shot log.

Forgetting English subtitles. They are required even when the dialogue is English.

Uploading a public link. The form asks for a private or unlisted link; a public video may also clash with the "created specifically for the award" rule if it has already circulated.

Choosing a theme after the film is made. The five themes are an entry condition, not a tag. Pick one first and make sure a juror could name it after watching.

A Five-Week Plan to November 20

Week one (to October 25): pick your theme, write the treatment, and download the intro card from the rules page.

Week two (to November 1): script, shot list and storyboard. Build the lead's reference images and test Seedance on the three hardest shots first.

Weeks three and four (to November 15): generate, cut and grade. Lock the lead's look before anything else. Add sound, music and English subtitles.

Week five: export a 16:9 1080p MOV or MP4, upload it as a private or unlisted link, and complete the four-step form (who you are, the film, how it was made, review). Submit by November 18 so a broken link or form error does not cost you the deadline.

Other Contests the Same Film Can Enter

A finished 6-minute AI short is a strong asset well beyond Dubai, as long as each contest's own rules allow it. Check exclusivity and premiere terms first, since the 1 Billion rules require a film "created specifically for the award" and grant the summit a promotional licence.

Artefact AI Film Festival in Paris closes December 2, 2026, with a €10,000 grand prize and a 314-second limit, so a 5-minute cut fits. Gossip Goblin x Showrunner pays $20,000 and closes December 15, but requires Showrunner Studio, so it needs a separate film. AKOOL's AI Film Challenge closes December 20 with $500,000 in creator rewards and its own tool rules. If your theme is climate, AI for the Future's COP31 round closes November 30 and screens work inside UN-aligned events. Expo AI Film Festival Dubai takes films under 10 minutes until January 21, 2027, and screens at Expo City in the same city as the summit.

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