AI Film Contests Closing in October 2026: All 30 Deadlines, Week by Week

The other 26 are festival calls with screenings, laurels and a few small cash awards, spread from Valencia and Athens to Seoul, Ottawa, Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires. This page lists every one of them by week, with the entry fee, the format rule most likely to disqualify you, and who is actually allowed to enter. We checked each deadline against our live database and the official pages on September 29, 2026. Our earlier October guide, written in July, listed five contests; the calendar has changed a lot since then.

The October money list

If you only have time for a few entries this month, start with the prizes that pay cash. PixLight 2026 is PixVerse's annual contest: $100,000 grand prize, $50,000 gold, $20,000 silver, twenty $5,000 Pilot Track awards and ten $3,000 Script Track awards. The official challenge page at app.pixverse.ai/challenge/pixlight now reads "Deadline Extended · October 31, 2026". Pilot Track entries run 3 to 20 minutes and must be made mainly in PixVerse Canvas.

Vigloo's 2026 Short Drama Festival pays $10,000 for the grand prize, $3,000 to two Excellence winners and $2,000 to two Merit winners, per vigloostudio.com. The catch is format: vertical 9:16, three minutes or less including credits, every element made with generative AI, and entries close October 11 at 23:59 Korea time, which is the morning of October 11 in New York.

Curious Refuge's 4th AI Horror Film Competition pays $7,000, $3,000 and $2,000, closes October 9 at 11:59 PM Pacific, and caps films at three minutes with music and sound effects from Epidemic Sound. AI Filmfest Athens pays €1,000 in each of three juried categories (Best AI Film, Best Direction and the Mythos Award), per its FilmFreeway page. FESTIAV in Valencia pays €1,000 for Best Fiction and €250 to €500 in four genre categories, per festiav.com. The Atlanta AI Ad Fest guarantees $2,500 in cash, but read the eligibility note below before you plan for it.

Week 1, October 1 to 7

FESTIAV Valencia closes October 4. It is the festival's second edition, screening October 26 to 30 at ABC Park, with category prizes from €250 to €1,000 and a separate 24-hour FESTIAV LAB for teams of two or three that pays €3,000. Our database lists the fee at €5 standard, rising to €20 depending on the submission date, and a 16:9, 1920x1080, 24 fps delivery spec.

Slamdance closes its DIG category (Digital, Interactive and Gaming) on October 6. The official submission page says films made through or with AI are "strongly encouraged" to enter DIG. You are in the extended tier now: $90, after $50, $60 and $70 tiers that have already closed. Notifications go out December 17, 2026, and the festival runs February 18 to 24, 2027.

World AI Cinema Festival, the monthly competition from the World Film Festival in Cannes network, closes its current cycle October 6. There is no cash prize; winners get laurels and a digital certificate. AI London Film Festival's final tier closes October 7, with notifications October 16 and screenings at the Close-Up Cinema in London on November 14 and 15. Fees run $15 to $25.

Week 2, October 8 to 14

October 9 is the busiest single day of the month. Curious Refuge's horror competition closes, so does the LifeArt AI Global Film Festival ($17 to $38, IMDb-qualifying selection, notifications November 1), and so does WAIFF Buenos Aires, which is open only to Argentine nationals and legal residents and sends its winner onto WAIFF's Road to Cannes for the April 2027 finale.

October 10 brings two deadlines. AIMA, the AI Movie Awards, closes submissions for its first UK edition at the IET in London on November 7 and 8, with film awards plus new Art Image, Art Motion, Ads and Music categories. A Gossip Goblin GenJam also closes applications: 15 teams of two to four make a two-minute film from a seed clip at Google DeepMind in San Francisco on October 20, for $2,000, $1,000 and $500. The Luma event page shows it as full, with a waitlist.

Vigloo closes October 11 in Korea time. The orhena AI Contest closes the same day; it is a social post contest with $30, $20 and $10 prizes, so treat it as a warm-up, not a festival credit. Ai and Robots Film Festival in Taipei closes October 12, and AI Toronto Shorts, a one-night screening with jury and audience awards, closes October 14.

Week 3, October 15 to 21

Tel Aviv AI Film Festival closes October 15. It is a first edition, a one-day competition at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque during Tel Aviv AI Week on November 10, and four of its five categories are free to enter; Best Visual Achievement costs $5. Golden Dunes Dubai closes the same day, with Best AI Short, Best AI Commercial and Best AI Music Video screening at the Paramount Hotel Theatre in late November.

DAIFF, the Disrupt AI Film Festival run by TBWA in Australia, closes October 16. Per daiff.com.au, films must be Australian-made, not yet screened in Victoria before October 29, and the gala is November 18 in Melbourne, with Google among the supporters. Categories are split by length: under three minutes, three to 15 minutes, and a student award under three minutes.

October 18 closes AI Cinema Festival Canada in Ottawa (screenings November 13 to 15, awards including Grand Prix Canada and a Responsible AI Cinema Award) and IA en Corto in Santiago, Chile, which costs €2 and takes Spanish and English films where AI matters to the work but does not have to generate all of it. AI Filmfest Athens closes October 19, with the ceremony at the Ellinikon Experience Centre on November 6.

October 20 has five deadlines: the African AI Film Festival (free for Africa-based, student and emerging filmmakers, with Hollywood and Kampala premieres and Runway and Adobe credits), the I'Mpossible Film Festival for memory, exile and "unfilmable" stories, GenTO in Toronto ($20 to $40), AI Film Awards Bali (six categories, 100% AI-generated work only) and AI Film Awards Brasil.

Week 4, October 22 to 31

All Is Prompt, the Mexico City online festival, closes October 25 with entry fees between $1.68 and $7.36 and room for features of 40 to 120 minutes. The Atlanta AI Ad Fest also lists October 25 as its entry deadline, but its official site shows a separate registration deadline of September 15 and a $10 registration fee. If you did not register by then, assume you cannot enter; its prizes are $500 per division Grand Prix and $1,000 for Best of Festival.

October 31 closes four more. PixLight is the big one. AI Film Festival Africa (AIFFA) is free, asks "What does Africa look like in 2063?", caps films at 15 minutes and screens in Antananarivo on November 28. (UN)REAL in Turin gives symbolic, non-cash awards across six categories. Korea AI Cinema Festival (KACF) awards Gold, Silver, Bronze and a Jury Award in each category and screened 110 AI films in Seoul's Chungmuro district at its last edition, per its listing.

Which October contests are free

Six of October's cash or screening opportunities cost nothing to enter: PixLight, Vigloo, the Gossip Goblin GenJam (application only), AIFFA, the free Tel Aviv categories, and the African AI Film Festival for Africa-based, student and emerging entrants. Curious Refuge does not charge a fee in its published rules, but it requires Epidemic Sound music, which is a paid subscription if you do not already have one. Everything else in October charges between €2 and $90. A realistic free-only plan for one finished short: Curious Refuge on October 9 if it is horror and under three minutes, then Tel Aviv on October 15, then AIFFA on October 31 if the story is about Africa.

Check eligibility before you cut a version

Several October contests limit who can enter, and each limit is easy to miss. WAIFF Buenos Aires is limited to Argentina. DAIFF is limited to Australian-made films. The GenJam is application-only and full. Atlanta requires registration that closed September 15. The African AI Film Festival's free tier is for Africa-based, student and emerging filmmakers, and its main focus is African and diaspora creators. Read the eligibility line on each contest page before you build a special cut.

Two format rules also split the month. Vigloo wants vertical 9:16; FESTIAV wants horizontal 16:9. Athens, Bali and Vigloo want every visual element AI-generated, while IA en Corto, GenTO and Slamdance accept hybrid work. If your film was made in Runway, Kling, Veo, Sora or Hailuo with live-action plates or practical footage, skip the fully-AI calls and aim at the hybrid ones.

One film, several October deadlines

Most people have one finished short, not five. A horizontal three-minute AI short can go to FESTIAV on October 4, AI London on October 7, Curious Refuge on October 9 if it is horror, Tel Aviv on October 15 and Athens on October 19 if it runs at least three minutes. A 3 to 20 minute pilot built in PixVerse Canvas belongs in PixLight by October 31. A vertical cut under three minutes fits Vigloo, and nothing else on this list asks for vertical. Put October 9 in your calendar first; three contests close that day.

What changed since our July October guide

The HKBU Future Film Fest (3F), which our July guide listed for October 31, is closed; our database shows its deadline as June 25, 2026. AI London's final tier is now October 7, not October 16. AI Film Awards Bali's regular deadline is October 20. PixLight moved from October 9 to October 31. We also left out one October listing, the OpenCV AI Competition, because it asks entrants to build computer vision software rather than make films. For contests that close after October, see our November and December deadlines page.