WAIFF 2027: How to Reach the World AI Film Festival in Cannes

WAIFF calls this the Road to Cannes: nine city editions between September 2026 and March 2027, each picking finalists that go on to the Cannes screening. Three of those feeder editions take entries right now. Buenos Aires closes October 9, 2026. London's late deadline is October 23 and its super-late deadline is November 17. Los Angeles stays open until January 20, 2027. The catch is that each feeder only accepts creators from its own country, so the first thing to work out is which door is yours.

What WAIFF Is and Why Filmmakers Care

WAIFF is organized by Institut EuropIA, a French nonprofit association, with IMES and Studio Laffitte. Its FilmFreeway listing names Jean Edouard André as director and Julien Raout as artistic director. The 2027 finale is the festival's third edition. The second, held April 21 to 22, 2026, filled four venues in Cannes (the Palais des Festivals, Espace Miramar, Cinéma Les Arcades and the JW Marriott) and handed out 14 awards.

Two things set WAIFF apart from the dozens of other AI film festivals in our directory. The first is the room. A screening at the Palais, the building that hosts the Cannes Film Festival each May, still carries weight on a reel or a pitch deck, even though WAIFF is a separate event from the main Cannes festival. The second is the jury. The 2026 edition was presided over by actress Gong Li, with Claude Lelouch as honorary president, Agnès Jaoui as jury president and Jean-Michel Jarre as ambassador. The WAIFF recap lists Aïssa Maïga, Elsa Zylberstein, Ruby Yang and Joanna Popper among the other jurors. Few AI contests put work in front of people with that much standing in traditional film.

How Big the 2026 Edition Got

The numbers show how crowded WAIFF has become. WAIFF's own recap reports nearly 5,500 submissions from more than 80 countries for 2026. Screen International, covering the festival from Cannes, put the figure above 7,000, up from about 1,500 the year before, with 1,300 entries from South Korea alone. The official selection was 54 films.

Whichever count you use, the acceptance rate for the 2026 selection was around one percent. Screen quoted the artistic director saying "last year's best films wouldn't make this year's selection," a sign of how fast the tools moved in twelve months. Expect the bar to rise again for 2027. Screen also reported that WAIFF was building a streaming platform with more than 500 films and expected full-length AI fiction features at the next edition.

Who Won in 2026, and What It Tells You

The top prize, Best WAIFF Film, went to Costa Verde by French writer-director Léo Cannone, a 12-minute short about childhood produced by the UK's New Forest Films. It also won Best AI Fantasy. The rest of the winners list, per WAIFF's official recap: Best AI Feature to Napoléon III, Le prix de l'audace (Édouard Jacques); Best AI Action to A Dollar Story (Qiu Sheng); Best AI Animated to La Sélection mécanique (Jules Blachier); Best AI Micro-Series to Devoured (Eun Young Lee and Heui Song Son); Best AI Emotional to The Beginning (Ibraheem Diab); Best AI Advertising to Life Is About the Ride (Aurélien Bigot); and a CapCut Award for Apocalypse, The Art of Tovar (Nyko Oliver). There were also awards for Best Art Film, Best Youth Film, Best First AI Film, Best AI Original Score and a Press Award.

Two patterns stand out. The winning film was a personal story, not a showcase of effects. Juror Elsa Zylberstein told Screen that AI suited action, VFX and period work better than human drama, and Costa Verde won by doing the opposite. And the award categories reward formats beyond the short film: vertical micro-series, advertising, a feature and original score all had their own prizes. If your strongest work is a two-minute vertical series or a 30-second spot, WAIFF has a lane for it.

The Road to Cannes 2027: Every Edition and Date

These are the dates WAIFF lists on its official site as of September 26, 2026:

Beijing (WAIFF China): September 21, 2026, already held. Buenos Aires: October 30, 2026, entries close October 9. Istanbul (WAIFF Turkey): November 4, 2026. This is a different event from TAIFF, the Türkiye International AI Film Festival, which is also in Istanbul and closes November 1. London (WAIFF UK): November 24, 2026, final entries November 17. Abidjan: February 2027. Tokyo: March 2027. Seoul: March 18 to 19, 2027. São Paulo: March 22 to 23, 2027. Los Angeles (WAIFF USA): March 29 to 30, 2027, entries close January 20, 2027. Cannes Grand Finale: April 6 to 7, 2027.

Entry windows for Istanbul, Abidjan, Tokyo, Seoul and São Paulo were not published in a form we could verify on the day we checked, so we have left them out rather than guess. We add each one to the directory when its call for entries opens.

WAIFF Buenos Aires: Closes October 9

This is the first Argentine edition, run with the City of Buenos Aires government. Registration opened September 15 and closes October 9, 2026 at 11:59 pm. Entrants must be Argentine nationals or legal residents. Films must be in Spanish with English subtitles, and the subtitles are mandatory. The jury picks finalists by October 23, finalists hear on October 27, and the screening and awards ceremony is October 30 at the Centro de Convenciones Buenos Aires.

Six categories are open: short, feature, animation, micro-series, advertising and documentary. Fully AI-generated films and hybrids that mix real footage with AI both qualify, as long as AI plays a significant role. Deepfakes that impersonate an identifiable person without permission are banned. The main prize is a ticket onward: the jury selects the five best Argentine films to screen at WAIFF Cannes 2027. The official page does not list an entry fee.

WAIFF London: Late Deadline October 23

WAIFF London is open to UK-based creators aged 13 and over, with parental consent for anyone under 18. Its FilmFreeway listing gives an early-bird deadline of September 1, a regular deadline of September 27, a late deadline of October 23 and a super-late deadline of November 17, 2026. Fees are £45, £55 and £75 per category across the published tiers. Winners are notified November 20 and the event is November 24 at Bloomsbury Big Top on Guilford Street.

The listing names seven competition categories (Short Film, Advertising, Music Video, Documentary, Masterpieces, Vertical Micro-series or Single Piece, and 3D Worlds for AR, VR, XR and game work) and a Feature Film option on the entry form. From 11 winners, a jury selects five works to advance to Cannes, and one of those five is named the WAIFF London Grand Prix. Every entry needs a Production Journal naming the AI tools used; entries without one are not reviewed. Content Credentials (C2PA) on final files are encouraged.

WAIFF USA in Los Angeles: Closes January 20, 2027

The US edition has the longest runway. It is open to US-based creators aged 13 and over. Entry fees on the official site run $15 to $30 in the early-bird window that ended July 31, $25 to $45 through the regular deadline of November 30, 2026, and $35 to $60 in the late window ending January 20, 2027. Notifications go out February 15, 2027 and the Los Angeles event runs March 29 to 30, 2027.

There are nine categories: Live Action Short, Feature, Animated Short, Documentary, Vertical and Mobile, Music Video, Advertisement and Commercial, AR/VR/XR Experience, and Gaming. Best Student and Best Youth (ages 13 to 18) are flag awards drawn from the whole pool. The structure mirrors London: 11 winners, five advance to Cannes, one WAIFF USA Grand Prix. The rules also ask for documented consent for any recognizable likeness or voice under the SAG-AFTRA Digital Replica Rider, a production journal, and music cleared at sync, master and mechanical level. Enter by November 30 and you save the late-fee bump.

The Rules Your Film Has to Meet for Cannes

Both the London and US listings say a winning work must also meet the category criteria of WAIFF Cannes to advance. The 2026 Cannes rules, published by Institut EuropIA, are the best guide until the 2027 version appears. Short films had to run 5 to 10 minutes. Features had to run longer than 25 minutes. Micro-series needed four to six vertical episodes of two minutes or less each. Advertising films were expected to run 15 to 60 seconds, with room to go longer if the idea needed it.

Every category required at least three generative AI tools, including at least one image-generation tool. In practice that is easy to document if you build keyframes in Midjourney or Flux, animate them in Runway, Kling, Veo or Hailuo, and score or voice with Suno or ElevenLabs. Write the pipeline down as you go, because the regional editions now make a production journal mandatory. Films had to be in English or subtitled in English, and finalists had to supply a French-subtitled version. If your short runs 13 minutes, cut it before you enter a feeder edition, or it may win locally and still fail the Cannes criteria.

If You Live Somewhere Else

Creators outside Argentina, the UK and the US have two paths. Watch for the regional edition that covers your country; China, Turkey, Ivory Coast, Japan, South Korea and Brazil all have one on the 2027 calendar. Or watch for the direct international call. WAIFF's 2026 FilmFreeway listing was open to creators worldwide, and the festival says filmmakers can submit through regional portals or FilmFreeway, but a 2027 direct-entry page with dates and fees was not live when we checked.

While you wait, two other listings in our directory put AI films on a Cannes stage. AI Cinema Festival Cannes 2027 and the new AI category at the Cannes Film Awards 2027 (deadline May 1, 2027) are both open. Neither is part of WAIFF, and neither screens at the Palais, so read their pages before you treat them as substitutes. Subscribe at the bottom of this page and we will email you when each remaining WAIFF edition opens its call for entries.