AI Film Festivals in Canada 2026: Every Open Contest From Ottawa to Montréal

The nearest is GenTO's late window in Toronto, closing October 1, 2026, followed by the AI Cinema Festival Canada in Ottawa on October 18. In order after that: Veritas AIFF Toronto (November 30), AI Slop Film Festival Season 2 in Markham (December 16), AI Cinema Festival Québec City (January 24, 2027), and AI CINEMA Montréal (February 5, 2027). Every deadline, venue and prize figure below was checked against our live contest database and each festival's own site on September 13, 2026.

The short answer: Canada's AI film festival map in 2026

Toronto alone now runs three separate AI-native festivals in a single calendar year, more than any other Canadian city and a sign of how fast the scene grew from a standing start. Cinema Shift Festival, billed by TorontoToday.ca as "Toronto's first AI film festival," opened the year on June 5 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and has already closed. Veritas AIFF followed with a one-day showcase of 16 international AI-made shorts at the Carlton Cinema, and GenTO closes its late submission window October 1 ahead of a two-night screening at Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto, on December 5 and 6. Ottawa's contribution is the biggest single prize slate in the country: the AI Cinema Festival Canada, running five named awards including a Grand Prix Canada, with an October 18 deadline and a three-day event November 13–15. Markham hosts the country's most unusual entry, AI Slop Film Festival Season 2, which screens January 23, 2027 and openly courts "beautiful failures" over polish. Québec City and Montréal close out the calendar into early 2027, both organized by the same three-city festival network that also runs the Ottawa edition.

Ottawa: the country's biggest AI-specific prize slate

The AI Cinema Festival Canada is the most structurally serious AI festival in the country. It runs November 13–15, 2026 in Ottawa with public screenings, industry conversations and an awards program, and its FilmFreeway deadline is October 18, 2026. Five categories decide the night: Grand Prix Canada, Best Human + AI Direction, Best AI Cinematography, the Responsible AI Cinema Award, and the Audience Signal Award — a spread that rewards craft and disclosure as much as spectacle. The accepted-format list is unusually wide for a young festival: vertical, immersive, interactive, micro-short, trailer, fashion film, music video, XR and straight experimental work all qualify, so a piece built for a phone screen competes on equal footing with a gallery-style immersive cut. Submissions go through FilmFreeway at canadian.aicinemafestival.com. The Responsible AI Cinema Award in particular signals what the jury is actually screening for: not "was this made with AI" but "was the AI used responsibly and transparently," which tracks with the disclosure-first posture every other Canadian AI festival on this list has independently converged on.

Toronto has three AI festivals now, and they are not interchangeable

Cinema Shift Festival opened the Toronto AI-festival calendar on June 5, 2026 at Hot Docs' Ted Rogers Cinema, screening narrative shorts in which AI-generated or AI-directed elements make up the majority of the finished work — TorontoToday.ca called it Canada's first curated AI film festival, and its submission window is already closed. Veritas AIFF picked up the thread with a one-day event at the historic Carlton Cinema on Carlton Street, showcasing 16 short films from filmmakers around the world, each selected for how it used AI across storytelling, visuals or both; Veritas bills itself as Canada's first festival dedicated specifically to exploring AI's possibilities in filmmaking, distinct from Cinema Shift's narrative-only brief. GenTO closes the trio and is the most structured of the three: an opening date of May 1, 2026, an earlybird deadline of July 1 (Standard $20, Student $15, Gold Member $15), a regular deadline of September 1, and a late deadline of October 1, with notifications going out November 1 ahead of the December 5–6 screening at Innis Town Hall on the University of Toronto campus. GenTO explicitly frames itself as human-first — the site's language is that AI expands the tools available to artists rather than replacing them, and submissions are judged on artistic authorship and craft, not technical novelty. Toronto's three festivals therefore split cleanly by philosophy: Cinema Shift for narrative-majority AI work, Veritas for a globally curated single-night showcase, and GenTO for the most competitively structured, fee-tiered entry with the clearest jury framework.

Two different festivals both call themselves "AI Cinema Festival" — do not confuse them

This is the trap a filmmaker researching Canada will actually hit. The AI Cinema Festival Canada in Ottawa runs on the domain canadian.aicinemafestival.com and belongs to a three-city network that also operates quebec.aicinemafestival.com and montreal.aicinemafestival.com — the same organizing team runs Ottawa's November 2026 edition, a Québec City edition closing January 24, 2027, and a Montréal edition whose 2026 cycle already closed August 30. A second, unrelated organization runs AI CINEMA — Festival of AI Filmmaking at iamcinemafestival.com, also based in Montréal, describing itself as "a transmission from the near future" and screening at Funamis on March 5, 2027; its FilmFreeway window runs through February 5, 2027, with notifications February 15. Same city, similar name, two separate juries, two separate deadlines, two separate submission links. If a filmmaker searches "Montreal AI film festival" and submits to the wrong one expecting the other's screening date, that is an avoidable mistake — check the domain before you pay a fee.

Québec City: the network's newest expansion

quebec.aicinemafestival.com is the third city in the Ottawa organizers' network, positioning itself under a "human-led AI cinema" banner consistent with Ottawa's Responsible AI Cinema Award framing. Its FilmFreeway deadline is January 24, 2027, giving filmmakers who miss the Ottawa window in October a second chance to submit to the same organizing team and the same house style — likely candidates for craft-and-disclosure judging modeled on Ottawa's five-category rubric, though Québec City has not yet published its own award-category breakdown.

Markham's outlier: AI Slop Film Festival Season 2

Where every other Canadian AI festival on this list leans into "responsible" and "human-led" framing, AI Slop Film Festival goes the opposite direction on purpose. Season 2 screens January 23, 2027 at Rumiversal Studio in Markham, Ontario, and its own description calls it a festival dedicated to AI "as a creative force — unstable, funny, unsettling, brilliant, chaotic," built around AI-generated films, meme cinema, hybrid productions and what it calls "beautiful failures." Eligibility is broad by design: films completed in 2023 or later that meaningfully involve AI tools, any genre from narrative to experimental to documentary to meme-based hybrid, shorts and features both accepted, submissions open on FilmFreeway. It is the one festival here where a glitchy, unpolished, deliberately weird piece is not a liability — it is the target audience. If your film leans into visible AI artifacts rather than hiding them, Slop is built for exactly that, and it will not be competing for the same jury attention as Ottawa's Responsible AI Cinema Award.

The throughline: Canadian juries reward disclosure over spectacle

Every festival on this list except Slop explicitly frames its judging around transparency and human authorship rather than raw production value. Ottawa has a standalone Responsible AI Cinema Award. GenTO's public language is built around AI expanding artistic tools rather than replacing artists. Veritas curates specifically for how AI was used in the storytelling process, not just the finished frame. That is a different center of gravity than the American festival circuit, where the Future Vision XPRIZE and Runway's AI Film Festival are judged primarily on craft and concept at scale. A filmmaker deciding where to submit the same film should read the jury framing, not just the prize copy: a technically dazzling but ethically murky AI pipeline is a better fit for a US mega-prize than for Ottawa's rubric, and a scrappy, disclosure-heavy short with a clear human authorship story is a better fit for the Canadian circuit than for a pure spectacle contest.

Format and length: what each festival actually wants

The Ottawa festival's nine accepted formats — vertical, immersive, interactive, micro-short, trailer, fashion film, music video, XR, experimental — make it the most format-flexible entry on this list; a 30-second vertical piece and a 12-minute experimental cut compete in the same pool. GenTO accepts short films, experimental moving-image work and hybrid forms, without the vertical/XR emphasis Ottawa carries. Veritas's 16-film slate implies a tight, curated selection rather than a broad open call — expect a lower acceptance rate than a festival screening dozens of shorts. Slop accepts both shorts and features, the widest runtime range of any Canadian AI festival here. None of the seven publish a runtime floor as strict as some American contests, but check each FilmFreeway listing's specific runtime cap before cutting your final export — none of these organizations disclosed a universal maximum in their public materials, so treat the FilmFreeway submission page as the source of truth at export time.

A 60-day plan from today

If you are reading this on or near September 13, 2026, GenTO's late window is your nearest deadline at just over two weeks out, followed by Ottawa five weeks out. A realistic sequence: lock picture by September 22, finalize your AI-tool disclosure statement (every festival here asks for one in some form) by September 26, and submit to GenTO before October 1. Use the two-and-a-half remaining weeks to polish sound and color before Ottawa's October 18 close, submitting through canadian.aicinemafestival.com with your format tagged correctly against the nine accepted categories. If the film misses both windows, Veritas's November 30 close and Slop's December 16 close give you two more shots before the calendar rolls into 2027, when Québec City and Montréal both reopen the same strategic choice a second time.

Bottom line

Canada's AI film festival scene did not exist in any organized form before 2026, and it now runs seven separate open calls across five cities on a philosophy that consistently prizes disclosure and human authorship over raw AI spectacle. Toronto is the country's hub with three distinct festivals and three distinct audiences; Ottawa carries the most structured award slate and the widest format range; Markham's Slop festival is the one place a visibly AI-glitched film is an asset rather than a flaw; and the Québec City and Montréal network extends the Ottawa house style into early 2027 for anyone who misses the fall deadlines. The one operational trap is the naming collision between the two unrelated "AI Cinema Festival" brands both headquartered in Montréal — confirm the domain before you submit, and you will not lose a fee to the wrong festival.