AI Sci-Fi Film Contests 2026-2027: 4 Open Sci-Fi Awards and 3 Futures Calls

Three more calls are built around imagined futures and suit a sci-fi short: AI Film Festival Africa and the AI for the Future Festival's COP31 round both close November 30, and AI M0V1E, which takes every genre and pays $500 for Best AI Short Film, closes November 1. We read each official listing on October 30 and list them below in deadline order, with what each one pays, how long your film can run and what it asks you to disclose.

The year's biggest AI film prize went to sci-fi

The largest award an AI filmmaker could win in 2026 was a science fiction prize. The Future Vision XPRIZE asked for a three-minute film or trailer plus a 12-page treatment about a hopeful, technology-enabled future, with $3.5 million on the table. According to GamesBeat's September 28 report, the grand prize went to The Gifted by Jeff Synthesized, a film about a boy who rebuilds his late mother from her texts, voice and diary, and an AI that only asks questions. The win carries $2.5 million in equity investment toward a feature and $100,000 in cash for screenplay development, and the film also took the $50,000 first place in the SPECS Audience Choice Award. The runners-up were Nobody Dies on Mars (Verena Puhm), The Thorne Protocol (J. Ryan Williams), Senti (Isen Robbins) and Slingshot (Hal Watmough).

Smaller prizes tell the same story. At Chroma Awards Season 1, announced December 7, 2025, The Twin Earth by Jacopo Zanetti won Sci-Fi and Fantasy; Zanetti then won Best Visual, worth $50,000, at the Astana AI Film Festival in October. The XPRIZE's 2026 call closed August 15 and no 2027 edition has been announced, so the four contests below are where a sci-fi short can compete right now.

Hollywood AI Short Film Awards: Best Sci-Fi, $250

HASFA, now in its second season, pays $250 to the winner of each of seven genre awards: Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Sci-Fi, Documentary and Animation. Best Picture pays $750 and the Emerging Creator Award another $250, for $2,750 in cash in total, per the festival's FilmFreeway page. The regular deadline is October 31, 2026, the late deadline December 15 and the final deadline January 11, 2027. Our listing has fees running from $25 at earlybird to $55 at the final tier, per category.

Films must run 22 minutes or less including credits, must have been completed on or after January 1, 2024, and need English subtitles if they are not in English. The rules ask for meaningful creative use of AI anywhere in development, production, post, animation, visual design or audio, so a hybrid film with live-action plates and Runway or Kling environments qualifies. You can enter the same project in more than one category, with a separate fee each time. Winners screen at the London West Hollywood Screening Room in Los Angeles on February 13, 2027, during Super Bowl weekend.

Florence AI Festival: Best Fantasy / Sci-Fi (New World)

The Florence AI Festival is the first edition of a competition run by VIA - Visual Innovation Awards, the team behind the Rome AI Festival. It has eight categories, and the sci-fi one is called New World: the festival describes it as a worldbuilding category for films that build places, creatures and futures that could not have been photographed. The extended deadline is December 15, 2026, with notifications on January 15 and the awards on February 15, 2027 at Palazzo San Niccolo in Florence.

The rules are strict about AI. Generative AI must be a significant creative component, and fully live-action films are not eligible. Every entry needs an AI Statement of 100 to 300 words in the submission notes naming the tools, the workflow and which parts of the film they produced; entries without one may be disqualified without a refund. Films can run up to 20 minutes including credits, must have been completed after January 1, 2025, and entrants must be 18 or older. Each category winner gets a trophy, a laurel and a screening in Florence. Cash and partner prizes had not been published when we checked; the festival says they will be added as sponsors sign.

Chroma Awards Season 2: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, free to enter

Chroma is the competition founded in 2023 as Project Odyssey and incubated by ElevenLabs. Season 2 opened October 19, 2026 and closes January 7, 2027 at 11:45 PM Pacific. It is free, entries are unlimited, and each project goes into one category. The Film & TV division has eleven categories, including Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure and Horror, Thriller & Crime, with a $38,000 division total. Across all divisions Chroma lists more than $450,000 in cash and travel perks, and extra money for using sponsored tools such as Kling, Luma, LTX, PixVerse, MiniMax and ElevenLabs.

Projects made after February 1, 2026 are eligible. Winners are announced February 11, 2027, with a gala in April. Because Chroma charges nothing and closes in January, it is the obvious place to send a sci-fi short you are also entering elsewhere, as long as each festival's premiere rules allow it.

AI Toronto Genre Awards: the AI Neon Frontier Award

This first-year Toronto festival is the only one on the list built entirely around genre film. Its signature sci-fi prize, the AI Neon Frontier Award, goes to the film that best recreates 1980s science fiction through AI: chrome and CRT glow, neon grids, starfields and synth. It sits alongside a matching 1980s horror award and five standard prizes: Best AI Genre Short, Best AI Director, Best AI Visual Effects, Best AI Sound & Score and an Audience Choice Award voted on the night.

Shorts can run up to 30 minutes and qualify if AI was used anywhere in the pipeline, from image and video generation to voice, music, editing or the screenplay. The festival runs eleven deadline tiers. The next closes November 7, 2026, and the last on May 22, 2027, with notifications on May 28 and the screening on June 5, 2027 at The Morpheus, 49 Elm Street in downtown Toronto. The listing names laurels and a live awards night rather than cash, so enter this one for a screen and a genre audience, and enter early while the fee is at its lowest tier.

Three futures-themed calls that suit sci-fi

AI Film Festival Africa (AIFFA) has set one question for 2026: what does Africa look like in 2063? The FilmFreeway listing names science fiction and Afrofuturism among the formats it wants. You do not need to live in Africa, but your film must meaningfully explore Africa, its people, cultures or possible futures, and our listing caps it at 15 minutes. The deadline has moved to November 30, 2026, and selected films screen in Antananarivo, Madagascar on January 16, 2027. The top three films win prizes; amounts are not published.

The AI for the Future Festival, founded by Emmy-winning filmmaker and UN arts curator Lisa Russell, screens AI work inside United Nations convenings. Its fourth and final 2026 category is aligned with COP31 and asks for climate storytelling: resilience, ecological futures, biodiversity and just transitions. Film, photography, music and scripts are all accepted, the deadline is November 30 and the awards event is December 15, 2026. A near-future climate short fits it directly.

AI M0V1E Film Festival takes every genre from sci-fi and horror to documentary, and is the only one of these seven paying cash this week: $500 for Best AI Short Film, $700 for Best AI Series and $1,000 for Best AI Feature Film, plus distribution on the AI M0V1E app. Its late deadline is November 1, 2026, and our listing notes that cash prizes require uploading the film to m0v1e.ai.

Which sci-fi contest to enter first

Sort by deadline, then by what the win gets you. A finished short this week has two moves: HASFA's regular tier closes October 31 and AI M0V1E closes November 1. By November 30 you can add AIFFA if your story is set in Africa's future, and the COP31 round if it is about climate. December 15 is the last practical date for both Florence and HASFA's late tier. Chroma follows on January 7, then HASFA's final deadline on January 11. Toronto runs until May, which makes it the natural home for a film you finish in the spring.

If money matters most, Chroma is free and pays the most across its divisions, and HASFA pays a confirmed $250 for the sci-fi win. If a screen matters most, Florence, Los Angeles and Toronto all put winners in a room. If you are a European student, New Frames, which had a sci-fi category and free entry, closes today, October 30.

What sci-fi juries ask for

The prizes above went to films with a clear human idea at the centre. The Gifted is a story about grief that happens to involve an AI. The XPRIZE asked for a treatment as well as a film, and Florence and Toronto both say they judge the story and the craft rather than the tools. Worldbuilding is the part AI tools now make cheap, so a strong look will not carry a weak story on its own.

Write the disclosure before you upload. Florence wants 100 to 300 words, Chroma and HASFA ask about your AI use in the entry, and a reviewer reads your statement next to your film. Name each tool and what it did: Midjourney for production design, Kling, Veo, Sora or Runway for shots, ElevenLabs for voices, Suno for score. Then say what you did by hand, whether that is the edit, the sound design or the compositing.

Keep it short. The Runway AI Film Festival's 2026 film winners with a listed runtime ran between 4 and 9 minutes, and the XPRIZE format was three minutes. A five-minute sci-fi short fits inside every runtime cap on this page, from Florence's 20 minutes to Toronto's 30. Subscribe below and we will email you when new sci-fi calls open, including the 2027 editions of the festivals that have not announced yet.