AI Film Festivals in Australia and New Zealand 2026: DAIFF Closes Oct 16, VIC AI Awards Oct 20

The VIC AI Awards in Melbourne close October 20 and take entries from anywhere, with winners named on October 30. The LundinStudio AI Film Festival in Sydney is the slow option: its final deadline is January 21, 2027, and it screens March 18 to 19, 2027. 5 HYPERPHANTASIA in Sydney drew more than 3,800 entries, and Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland each held their own AI film nights. New Zealand has no open AI film call right now; its two 2026 competitions finished in May and July. Dates below were checked against each festival's FilmFreeway listing or official site on October 5, 2026.

The short answer, festival by festival

DAIFF closes October 16. It is for Australian-based applicants of any nationality, has three categories (short, long and student) and a total prize pool of A$10,000. The gala is at The Capitol in Melbourne on November 18, with a Sydney screening on November 24.

VIC AI Awards close October 20 (late deadline). They are open worldwide, run eight categories from AI short films to AI campaigns and AI music videos, and award crystal trophies at Quarterhouse in Docklands, Melbourne, on October 30.

LundinStudio AI Film Festival closes January 21, 2027. It takes 1 to 10 minute films from anywhere, with fees rising from a $25 early tier to a $55 final tier, and the event runs March 18 to 19, 2027.

Already finished this year: OMNI 1.5 HYPERPHANTASIA (Sydney, July 3), the Qld AI Festival (Brisbane, May 28 to 29), the NSW AI Awards (Sydney, September 25), the AI Sydney Indie Festival (Sydney, September 30), the Aotearoa 1 Minute AI Film Festival (Auckland, May 5) and FutureFrames:NZ (awards July 3 to 4).

DAIFF: the biggest Australian prize, and only Australians can enter

DISRUPT AI Film Festival calls itself Australia's first dedicated generative AI film festival, and its second edition is the one to prioritise if you live in Australia. Entry is through FilmFreeway. The FilmFreeway page is blunt about eligibility: the festival is open to Australian-based applicants of any nationality, and entries that break the length rules or skip required questions risk exclusion.

There are three categories. Best Short Film is for films under 3 minutes. Best Long Film covers 3 to 15 minutes. Best Student Film is under 3 minutes and needs proof of current enrolment. One film from the winners is named Grand Prix. The total prize pool is A$10,000, announced at a gala at The Capitol on Swanston Street, Melbourne, on November 18. Notifications go out November 6, and a Sydney screening follows on November 24. Our listing records the festival as free to enter.

The rules are worth reading before you export. The core creative elements must be developed with generative AI tools, though you can cut the final edit in Premiere or any other traditional editor. Music must be AI-generated or properly licensed, so a Suno score or a cleared track is fine and a pop song you do not own is not. Films must have been completed in the past 12 months, must be Australian-made, and must not have screened or been distributed in Australia before November 18, 2026. Works in progress are not accepted.

The 2026 theme is "Humans and Their Tools", which the festival describes as human-in-the-loop creativity, with AI as co-creator. Sponsors include TBWA, Google, Leonardo.AI and BMW. A film that shows a person making choices, not just a prompt making pictures, fits the brief.

The first edition gives a sense of the field. According to B&T, the 2025 festival at ACMI in Melbourne received 371 submissions and shortlisted 38. Peter Majarich's Black Box won the Grand Prix. Bruce Hunt's Lens Wide Open won Best Short Film, Erase by Ash "forevercoast" Phillips won Best Long Form, and Apoorva Tandon's Unhold won Best Student Film. With roughly one in ten entries reaching the shortlist, a tight under-3-minute short has a real chance.

VIC AI Awards: Melbourne trophies, open to the world

The VIC AI Awards are part of VIC AI Boom 2026 and are in their first year. Unlike DAIFF, they accept entries from Australia and from anywhere else. The FilmFreeway listing shows an earlybird deadline of September 9 and a regular deadline of September 30, both passed, and a late deadline of October 20. Notifications go out October 23, and winners are announced on Friday, October 30, at Quarterhouse, a three-level venue at 693 Collins Street in Docklands.

There are eight categories: Best in AI Animation, Best in AI Art, Best AI Campaign/Commercial, Best AI Influencer, Best in AI Music/Music Videos, Best AI Social Media Content, Best Use of AI in Gaming and Best in AI Short Films. Three special awards are judged from all entries: Best in Australia, Best in the World and Rising Star. Winners receive a crystal trophy, and the festival posts it to winners who cannot attend.

Two rules matter. Work must run under 3 hours and must not have screened before January 2020. The festival also warns that judging can happen at any time after you submit, so do not send a rough cut planning to swap it later.

This is the best Australian option for work that is not a short film. A Kling product spot, a Runway music video or a series of Midjourney stills each has its own category, and social content that would be ignored at a traditional festival has a category of its own here. The festival director, Matt Kirby, also runs the Australian AI Festival, whose first edition took place in St Kilda on December 22 and 23, 2025. As of October 5, its FilmFreeway page still describes the 2025 edition and has not posted 2026 dates.

LundinStudio AI Film Festival: the long deadline in Sydney

The LundinStudio AI Film Festival is in its third year and is the only Australian-run AI festival with a deadline in 2027. Submissions are taken on FilmFreeway and GenFlix until January 21, 2027, and the festival runs March 18 to 19, 2027, with finalists also shown on a live stream. Fees climb by tier, from $25 at the early tier to $55 at the final one, so entering in November costs less than entering in January.

The rules are stricter than most. Films must run 1 to 10 minutes including credits, must be based on an original script, and all visual footage must be AI-generated. You must own the copyright or hold licences for everything in the film, and non-English dialogue needs English subtitles. Files go in as MP4 or MOV.

The official site lists the judging criteria as storytelling, character consistency, pacing, cinematography and overall production value. Character consistency is the hardest of those for AI shorts. If your lead's face drifts between a Kling shot and a Veo shot, fix it with reference images or a single-model pipeline before you submit, because a judge is explicitly scoring it here.

Prizes are modest: a festival laurel, up to $300 in cash with your entry fee refunded, and software subscriptions to Saga and Melies, according to the festival's own page. This is a festival to enter for the screening and the laurel, not the money.

What already happened in 2026, and what to watch for in 2027

OMNI 1.5 HYPERPHANTASIA was the biggest AI film event in Australia this year. Presented by Envato, it screened at The Collider in Sydney on July 3, 2026, after receiving more than 3,800 films, five times as many as OMNI 1.0 in November 2025, according to the festival's winners announcement. A jury led by director Alex Proyas picked 23 winning films. The panel included Australian director Clayton Jacobson, Thea-Mai Baumann of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and AI researcher Professor Toby Walsh. Best Picture went to A Face Only a Mother Could Love by Robert Gaudette of Canada. The Signal to Noise Award went to Zack London's The Patchwright, and the one Australian winner named in the announcement was Jodie Heenan's Guardians of the Burrow, in documentary short form. OMNI required films to be at least 90% AI-generated. No date for the next edition has been announced.

The Qld AI Festival held its awards in Brisbane on May 28 and 29, with crystal trophies for category winners. The NSW AI Awards ran on September 25 at the 25hours Hotel The Olympia in Sydney, as part of the NSW AI Bonanza from September 23 to 25. The AI Sydney Indie Festival, directed by Daniel Holewa, held a single evening on September 30 for self-financed, crowd-financed or grant-backed shorts of 30 minutes or under, with The Sails Award for Best AI Indie Film and The Harbour Bridge Award for Best Human-AI Collaboration. Its rule against studio-controlled productions makes it one of the few festivals built for solo creators.

All four ran their calls between January and September, so expect 2027 calls on a similar calendar. We add each one to the directory when the call opens.

New Zealand: two competitions, both finished for 2026

New Zealand's AI film scene is smaller but has public money behind it. The Aotearoa 1 Minute AI Film Festival screened at Te Puna Creative Hub in Auckland on May 5, 2026, during the AI and Creativity Summit, with support from NZ On Air, the NZ Film Commission, Te Māngai Pāho and Kōawa Studios. The theme was "The Social". Films ran one minute, or two with credits, and entry was free. The NZ$1,000 Panel Prize was limited to New Zealand entrants, and a NZ$1,000 People's Choice Award was decided by audience vote at the summit. International entrants competed for a non-cash award.

FutureFrames:NZ, run by the Screen Music & Sound Guild with NZ Film Commission and NZ On Air support, took a different approach. Registrations opened March 27, filmmakers had four weeks to make a 1 to 5 minute hybrid short that could mix AI with traditional techniques, and the guild ran a free series of online workshops on May 23 and 24 covering scriptwriting, directing, editing, sound and music. Ten finalists screened and three winners were named at the July 3 to 4 ceremony, with prizes of $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000 plus post-production finishing and festival submission support, according to the guild.

Neither has announced a 2027 call. Until they do, New Zealand creators can enter the VIC AI Awards and LundinStudio, which are open to international entrants, but not DAIFF, which requires Australian residency.

If you want screen funding later, track your AI use now

Australian AI filmmakers who plan to apply for public funding should know the rules. Screen Australia published AI Guiding Principles in September 2024, built around talent and creativity, transparency, ethical use, fairness and accountability. In 2025 the agency updated its funding application forms to ask how AI is used in projects, and it requires any AI use by applicants to be declared.

That matters for festival work too. DAIFF asks detailed questions about your process, and every serious AI festival wants to know which tools did what. Keep a simple production log as you go: which shots came from Runway, Kling, Veo or Leonardo, where you edited by hand, where the voice came from ElevenLabs and where the score came from Suno. It takes ten minutes per project and answers every form you will meet, from DAIFF's entry questions to a Screen Australia application.

An October to January plan for an Australian AI filmmaker

If you have one finished short under 3 minutes, enter DAIFF before October 16. It is free, the pool is A$10,000, and the field is limited to Australian-based creators. If your film runs 3 to 15 minutes, enter it as a long film.

Before October 20, send a different piece to the VIC AI Awards: a music video, a campaign, a social piece or a second short. Do not send your DAIFF film. DAIFF bars films that have screened or been distributed in Australia before November 18, and work entered in the VIC AI Awards may be shown at VIC AI Boom events in Melbourne around October 30, which could cost you DAIFF eligibility.

Between November and January 21, enter LundinStudio, ideally at an early tier. Re-check the rules first: every visual must be AI-generated and the script must be original.

While you wait, look past Australia. The contest cards below show the live Australian listings, and our October and November-December deadline pages list dozens of international contests that take Australian entries, including free ones.