AI Film Festivals in Spain 2026-2027: Madrid, San Sebastián and Bilbao Deadlines, Plus Barcelona's RAIN Winners

The Kursaal-AI Film Festival in San Sebastián opened its second call on November 1 and closes January 31, 2027, with a €10 fee and trophies instead of cash. A third, the free Spanish-language Sin Cámara festival run from Bilbao, opens January 1 and closes May 5, 2027. Six more Spanish AI festivals ran in 2026 and have not yet posted 2027 calls: +RAIN in Barcelona, AIMA in Mallorca, Aplimedia in Bilbao, two Marbella events and FESTIAV in Valencia. We checked each official listing on November 5, 2026.

The Spanish AI film calendar, November 2026 to June 2027

Every date a filmmaker can act on, in order:

November 1, 2026: Kursaal-AI San Sebastián opens submissions on Festhome. January 1, 2027: IA Play Madrid final deadline. Sin Cámara opens the same day. January 15, 2027: IA Play Madrid announces its official selection. January 20 to March 10, 2027: IA Play Madrid streams selected films online for the audience vote. January 31, 2027: Kursaal-AI final deadline. February 1, 2027: deadline for IA Play's Panama stage, which feeds the same Grand Finale. February 25, 2027: Kursaal-AI notifies selected films. March 1 to 20, 2027: IA Play Madrid festival, ending with a gala on March 20 at Cine Artistic Metropol. March 15 to April 15, 2027: Kursaal-AI screens online, with awards at the AI Weekend Fest on April 10 and 11. March 26 and 27, 2027: AI Movie Awards returns to Magaluf, Mallorca (call not yet posted). May 5, 2027: Sin Cámara deadline. Finalists are announced May 31 and winners at a gala on June 6.

If you have one finished AI short today, Madrid and San Sebastián together cost €16 and give you two Spanish screenings by mid-April.

IA Play International Film Festival Madrid: €6, 40 minutes, Spanish subtitles

IA Play is run by Cultural Beast and is one of the cheapest paid AI festival entries in Europe: €6 per film on Festhome, or €5.52 with a Festhome Play discount. It takes work up to 40 minutes, completed in January 2023 or later, from anywhere in the world. You can send more than one film, but not a film you sent to an earlier IA Play edition.

There are four sections: an International 100% AI competition (fiction, documentary or experimental), a 100% AI animation competition, a Hybrid Narrative section for films that mix AI with traditional production, and a Web Series, Video Art and New Narratives section. The hybrid section matters. Many festivals ask for fully generated work, while IA Play accepts a live-action short with AI shots, as long as the AI use is "relevant, intentional and creative" rather than a cleanup tool.

The money is small and split in two stages. The Madrid stage pays a €250 Jury Award and a €150 Online Audience Award. Winners move to the Grand Finale, which pays €500 from the jury and €300 from the audience. That adds up to €1,200 in cash. Every prize also comes with an NFT, and every validated entry gets a participation NFT. Two further awards, Best Creative Use of AI and Highest Impact, carry an NFT and no cash.

Two rules trip people up. Non-Spanish films need Spanish subtitles, so budget an evening for an SRT file. You must also declare which AI tools you used and confirm you hold the rights. Name them plainly: Runway, Kling, Veo, Sora, MidJourney, ElevenLabs, Suno, whatever was in the pipeline.

The same organizer runs a Panama City stage with a February 1, 2027 deadline and the same €6 fee. If you miss January 1, that is your second door into the Grand Finale.

Kursaal-AI San Sebastián: shorts, features and series, trophies only

The Kursaal Film Festival San Sebastián runs an AI-only competition, now in its second edition. The 2026 edition closed January 31 and screened in March. The 2027 call opened November 1, 2026 and closes January 31, 2027.

It is one of the few Spanish AI festivals that takes long work. Shorts run 1 to 30 minutes, features must be over 60 minutes and series episodes 5 to 30 minutes, with the first two episodes submitted together. Fiction, animation and documentary all compete. There is no production-date limit and no cap on films per author, and a film that entered before without winning can enter again.

The fee is €10, or €9.20 and €8.20 with Festhome's Play and PRO discounts. Delivery is a password-protected Vimeo link with embedding switched on. Non-Spanish films need Spanish subtitles as a separate SRT file, preferably not burned in. The festival says it programs for an adult (18+) audience.

There is no cash. The best film in each category wins the Filmmaker's Dragonheart trophy, and the runner-up gets an Accesit diploma. Screenings are online from March 15 to April 15, 2027, and the trophies are handed out at the AI Weekend Fest on April 10 and 11. Enter Kursaal-AI if you want a laurel for a feature or a series. Few AI festivals in our directory run a series category at all.

Sin Cámara: the free one, in Spanish only

Sin Cámara, organized by Aplimedia in Bilbao, is a Spanish-language AI short festival for creators aged 16 and over. Entry is free. Films must be in Spanish or have no dialogue, and can be made wholly or partly with AI. The second edition opens January 1, 2027 and closes May 5, with finalists picked partly by public vote, a notification date of May 31 and a closing gala on June 6, 2027.

Prizes go to the top three films overall and to the best film in each of 17 genres, from action to western. Amounts will be announced during the festival, so treat it as recognition until they publish a figure.

Watch the length. Our listing, taken from the festival's own site in September, gives 30 seconds to 3 minutes. The current Festhome listing says 30 to 90 seconds. Until the organizer settles it, cut to 90 seconds or less and you are safe under both. Aplimedia also ran a 90-second international contest in Bilbao in 2026, which closed May 3 with five genre awards and cash that depended on sponsors.

What already happened in 2026: Barcelona, Mallorca, Marbella, Valencia

These festivals are closed for this cycle, but they are where the next Spanish calls will come from.

+RAIN Film Festival, Barcelona. Run by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, +RAIN describes itself as Europe's first university AI film festival. Its fourth edition ran June 14 to 17, 2026 at the UPF Poblenou campus. Entry was free, the Jury Award was €3,000 and the Audience Award €2,000, and selected filmmakers received €250 plus travel. Per UPF's own palmarès, Best Film went to Ping Pong by Tianji Yu, the Talent Award for the best Catalan production went to 09/05/1982 by Jorge Caballero and Camilo Restrepo, and a special mention went to Room 174 by Maria Bernardi. The jury was Marta Handenawer, Tana Gilbert and Miquel Martí Freixas. The 2026 call closed March 8 and required compliance with the EU AI Act, so expect a similar early-spring deadline in 2027.

AI Movie Awards (AIMA), Mallorca. The first AIMA ran April 24 and 25, 2026 in Magaluf, Calvià, with 17-plus categories, a €25 to €50 fee and a rule that films be at least 70% AI-generated. According to a November 2, 2026 report on mallorca.com, AIMA runs a London edition on November 7 and 8 during World Travel Market, then returns to Magaluf on March 26 and 27, 2027. No 2027 call is posted yet.

Marbella. The 21-year-old Marbella International Film Festival added an AI and Digital section for 2026, screened September 30 to October 5, with a £60 late fee and a pitch for co-production meetings rather than cash. Nearby in Puerto Banús, the first World AI Movie Festival (WAIMF) ran October 7 and 8 at the Red Dog Cinema, with a $500 Grand Prix and nine category awards. Runtime Wire reported on October 14 that WAIMF named 11 winners, and noted that its claimed 1,100 submissions could not be checked in public records.

FESTIAV, Valencia. The second Valencia International AI Film Festival ran October 26 to 30, 2026 and, per Valencia City Council, gathered 181 shorts from 38 countries. It paid €2,250 across five categories, led by €1,000 for Best Fiction, with €500 for a new Historical category and €250 for Best Valencian-language short. A separate 24-hour FESTIAV LAB challenge paid €3,000. Entry was €5 to €20 on Festhome. As of November 5, the winners had not been published in any source we could find.

Which Spanish AI festival should you enter?

Send a finished short of up to 40 minutes to IA Play Madrid before January 1. At €6 it is the cheapest paid entry on this list, and it is the only open Spanish festival paying cash right now.

Send a feature or a series to Kursaal-AI before January 31. Almost nowhere else takes AI series, and the fee is €10.

Save a Spanish-language micro-short of 90 seconds or less for Sin Cámara in the spring. It is free and the public vote rewards films people share.

Budget for subtitles. Madrid and San Sebastián both require Spanish subtitles on non-Spanish films. Local work also has its own prizes: RAIN gives a Talent Award to the best film produced in Catalonia, and FESTIAV pays for the best Valencian-language short.

Then watch for the spring calls. RAIN closed in early March last year and AIMA returns to Mallorca in late March. We add each one to the directory the day it opens.