AI Film Festival Winners 2026: Who Won Astana, Runway, Reply and WAIFF, and What the Winners Share

The other headline winners this year: Robert Gaudette of Canada took both the Runway AI Film Festival Grand Prix ($50,000) and first place at the Reply AI Film Festival in Venice with the same short, A Face Only A Mother Could Love. Léo Cannone's Costa Verde won Best WAIFF Film in Cannes. Plastic Erosion, from China, won the UN's AI for Good Film Festival. And on October 17, the Austin AI Film Festival gave 11 awards, led by Seif Abdalla's The Morisca. This page lists the 2026 winners of each major festival from their official announcements, as of October 24, 2026, then shows what the winners have in common and which contests are open now for your next film.

Astana AI Film Festival: $1,000,000 split across eight films

The first Astana AI Film Festival (AAIFF) in Kazakhstan was the largest AI film competition of the year by both entries and prize money. Per Qazinform's October 4 report, it drew 8,067 entries from 125 countries, put 25 films in the final, and announced the winners on October 3, the last day of the festival. The Express Tribune reported that the international jury included former UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and the investor Balaji Srinivasan.

The top three under the festival theme, The Future Worth Living In:

Grand Prix, $450,000: The First Honest Day by Nikolay Shestak (Latvia).

Second place, $200,000: Sitara by Abhik Banerjee (India).

Third place, $100,000: Looking for Perseida by Ernest Desumbila (Spain).

Five category awards paid $50,000 each: Best Character to It Was Just a Joke by Myrzakhan Zhumakhan (Kazakhstan), Best Story to The Last Span by the Chinese collective 2xLabs, Best Visual to What's the Job? by Jacopo Zanetti (Italy), Best Direction to The Fracture by Jacopo Reale, and Best Concept to Pomegranate by Zachary London. Those eight prizes add up to exactly $1,000,000.

Two details from the winners' interviews are useful if you are planning an entry. Desumbila told Qazinform he heard about the festival late and made his film in 10 days by locking himself at home. Liu Shuheng, who accepted Best Story for his team, said they used Seedance 2.5 and spent about six weeks on the script. A fast production can win when the idea fits the brief.

Runway AI Film Festival (AIF 2026): Grand Prix to Robert Gaudette

Runway's 2026 festival paid $135,000+ across its tracks and was free to enter until April 27. The film winners, per the official results at aif.runwayml.com:

Grand Prix, $50,000 plus 1,000,000 Runway credits: A Face Only A Mother Could Love by Robert Gaudette (7:50).

Gold, $15,000: The Well by Dorian & Daniel (5:29).

Silver, $10,000: Where Knights Fall by Mathery.

Honorees, $1,000 each: Costa Verde by Léo Cannone and New Forest Film, and Tairell Isn't Real by Dave Clark (5:04).

Merit awards, $500 each: Little Mes (Lucas Levitan and Fabián Jiménez), Between Before and After (Sifang Chen and Yang Wang), Postman (YUUUKI), Divine Retribution (Minju Choi) and Simiyu, Lies and Happiness (John Kirk Kelly).

Runway also named Best Of winners outside film: Advertising to UNVEIL's Salomon campaign, Design to Nessuno by Ricardo Villavicencio, Fashion to Puma: Memory Trace by Dmytro Horeniuk, New Media to Synapticon by Albert Barqué-Duran, and Gaming to Pluck 'Em by Adam Prusinowski. The winners screened in New York on June 11, Los Angeles on June 18 and Tokyo on July 30. Every film winner with a listed runtime ran between 4:19 and 8:21.

Reply AI Film Festival: the same film wins again in Venice

Reply's third festival presented its awards on September 6 at the Tennis Club Venezia on the Lido, during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Reply's press release says more than 3,000 shorts came in from 76 countries, ten reached the final, and Oscar winner Gabriele Salvatores chaired a jury that included Rob Minkoff and Catherine Hardwicke.

First place: A Face Only A Mother Could Love by Robert Gaudette (Canada), which Reply says was made with Grok, Nano Banana and Seedance.

Second place: Le Drip by Alex Naghavi and Ezra Li (United States), an animated short.

Third place: Centenarian Kindergarten by 2xLabs (China), which also won the AI for Good Award presented with the International Telecommunication Union.

Reply AI Studios Grand Prix and Community Award: Website by Jiaze Li.

Special mention: The Child of the Sea by Ibai Abad (Spain), made with Magnific and human-led editing.

Our listing for the 2026 edition shows €8,000, €5,000 and €2,000 for the top three. Entry was free and closed June 1.

WAIFF Cannes: Costa Verde wins Best Film

The second World AI Film Festival in Cannes gave its top prize, Best WAIFF Film, to Costa Verde, a 12-minute short by French writer-director Léo Cannone about childhood, produced by the UK's New Forest Films. It also won Best AI Fantasy. According to WAIFF's official recap, other winners included Napoléon III, Le prix de l'audace (Édouard Jacques) for Best AI Feature, A Dollar Story (Qiu Sheng) for Best AI Action, La Sélection mécanique (Jules Blachier) for Best AI Animated, Devoured (Eun Young Lee and Heui Song Son) for Best AI Micro-Series, and Life Is About the Ride (Aurélien Bigot) for Best AI Advertising. Juror Elsa Zylberstein told Screen that she thought AI suited action and VFX better than human drama, and the jury still gave its top award to a personal drama.

AI for Good, Austin and Chroma

AI for Good Film Festival (ITU, Geneva): announced July 9. First place went to Plastic Erosion by Yifei Li and Zheng Bao (China), second to Utility by Yuichi Ono (Japan) and third to Homo Sapiens Family by Vic Wanchana (Thailand). Winners receive the festival trophy, and finalists are invited to the AI for Good Global Summit.

Austin AI Film Festival: held October 16 to 17 at Zach Theatre, with 11 award winners. Short Film went to The Morisca (Seif Abdalla), Feature Film to MindPods (Jeff Synthesized), Documentary to The Sultana Disaster of 1865 (Gavin Carlton), Micro-Short to Kev (Mike Bennion), Music Video to PsychoPsypher (Eddie Jacobson), Hybrid to Hazama (Victor Moreno), Avant-Garde to SIMUL/ACTION #1 (Francesca Fini), Student Film to Listen To The Heart Of The Wood (Yunqi Zha, Cao Xinrui and Wang Dong), Brand/Commercial to DIA PRÉSENCE (Claudia Lalau), Series to The Reformation Room (Luke Mazey) and Trailer to Actor Zero (Zurab Dzhidzhilava).

Chroma Awards Season 1: the most recent completed season, announced December 7, 2025 after more than 6,500 entries. Railbound (Jonathan Perry, Mike Brodie and Alex Naghavi) won Documentary, The Twin Earth by Jacopo Zanetti won Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and Freedom by Mike Bennion won the Rock, Country and Metal music video category.

The same names keep winning

Put the winners lists side by side and the overlap is hard to miss. At least five filmmakers or teams won at two different festivals in the last year:

Robert Gaudette won Runway's Grand Prix and Reply's first place with one film.

Costa Verde won Best Film at WAIFF and an Honoree award at Runway.

2xLabs placed third at Reply, won Reply's AI for Good Award, and won Best Story ($50,000) at Astana with a different film.

Jacopo Zanetti won Chroma's Sci-Fi and Fantasy category, then Best Visual ($50,000) at Astana.

Alex Naghavi co-made Railbound, Chroma's Documentary winner, and co-directed Le Drip, second at Reply.

Mike Bennion won a Chroma music video category and Austin's Micro-Short award.

Two lessons follow. First, one strong film can be entered at several festivals. Gaudette's short won at two of the year's best-known AI festivals, five months apart. Read each festival's premiere rule before you enter, because some ask for films that have not been released or screened elsewhere. Second, juries recognize the names that keep coming back. A winning film is the best introduction to the next jury, which is why a planned festival circuit beats sending one film to one contest.

What the 2026 winners had in common

Human stories won the top prizes. Costa Verde is about a childhood. Gaudette's film follows a dancer with a facial disfigurement. At Astana, third-place winner Desumbila said his film grew out of the festival's theme phrase, The Future Worth Living In.

Short running times won. Every Runway film winner with a listed runtime ran between 4 and 9 minutes. Astana's third-place film took 10 days to make. A tight five-minute film that you finish well beats an ambitious 20-minute one with weak shots.

Tool choice did not decide anything. The tools named by this year's winners include Seedance, Grok, Nano Banana and Magnific, and they won across festivals run by different tool companies and by organizers with no tool to sell. Unless a contest requires one platform, as PixLight requires PixVerse Canvas and the 1 Billion Followers award requires Seedance, juries judge the film, not the software.

Big money went to new festivals. Astana paid $1,000,000 in its first year, and the 1 Billion Followers Summit paid $1,000,000 to Zoubeir Jlassi for LILY in January 2026. Watch for first editions, because they often have the most money and the fewest experienced entrants.

Where to send your next film

Most of 2026's winning festivals have closed, and several 2027 calls are already open. As of October 24, 2026, from our database:

PixLight 2026 (PixVerse): free, $300,000 across 33 awards, closes October 31. PixVerse Canvas must be your main platform for the Pilot Track.

1 Billion Followers Summit AI Film Award 2027: free, $1,000,000 grand prize, 5 to 7 minute films at least 70% made with Seedance, closes November 20.

WAIFF London: UK-based creators only, five winners advance to WAIFF Cannes 2027, final deadline November 17.

Artefact AI Film Festival, Paris: €10,000 Grand Prix, films up to 314 seconds, closes December 2.

Curious Refuge Holiday Competition: free, $7,500+ in cash, closes December 6.

Chroma Awards Season 2: free, $450,000+ in cash and travel perks across seven divisions, closes January 7, 2027.

WAIFF Cannes 2027: €15 per film until November 15, then €30, final deadline February 15, 2027.

AI for Good Film Festival 2027: 1 to 10 minute films, applications January 15 to May 1, 2027.

Runway, Reply and Astana have not published 2027 calls yet. All three were free in 2026. Subscribe below and we will email you when they open, so you can enter in the first week instead of the last.