Currently 6 active prizes and awards, across AI, arts, film, journalism, research, tech and cross-disciplinary practice. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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The American Academy in Berlin is an independent, nonprofit institute for advanced study in the arts, humanities, social sciences, law, journalism and public policy, whose primary mission is to strengthen the cultural and intellectual ties between the United States and Germany. Each year, after a rigorous selection process, the Academy awards roughly two dozen semester-long Berlin Prize fellowships to individuals who demonstrate excellence in their fields. DISCIPLINES: applications are welcome across the humanities, social sciences, law, journalism and various areas of public policy. The Academy generally encourages projects addressing pressing issues of the day, specifically naming democracy, security, technology and society (especially AI), energy including climate, and global order. Dedicated fellowships also support projects in Jewish studies, German studies, and public health and biotechnology. Project proposals need not focus on Germany, but candidates should explain how a residency in Berlin would enhance their work. NOT ACCEPTED: proposals in mathematics or the natural sciences. NOTE FOR ARTISTS: visual artists and composers are invited through separate, nomination-based competitions, so there is no open application route for them here. ELIGIBILITY: fellowships are restricted to citizens and permanent residents of the United States. Both emerging and established figures are eligible. PhD holders qualify as emerging scholars with a strong record of peer-reviewed work beyond the dissertation; candidates in non-academic fields such as journalism, filmmaking and policy need a significant record of publication or production; fiction and nonfiction writers must have published at least one book with a reputable press. WHAT FELLOWS DO: fellows present their work to audiences in and around Berlin through lectures, readings, public discussions, performances and film screenings, and should be willing to engage with relevant German institutions, organizations and the media; these activities are integral to the Academy's mission of fostering transatlantic dialogue. APPLICATION MATERIALS: a project proposal of 1,500 to 1,750 words plus a one-page bibliography; a curriculum vitae of up to 10 pages; two writing samples totalling no more than 60 pages; and three letters of recommendation, which are due 2 October 2026. DEADLINE: Friday 25 September 2026 at 12:00 noon Eastern Time (18:00 Central European Time). TIMELINE: all candidates are notified of the competition outcome by email in late March 2027; the 2027-28 Berlin Prize recipients are announced in May 2027.
Call for short films (1-10 minutes) involving human/AI hybrid creation, from the We Are Human Foundation in Paris. Three cash awards: Grand Prix EUR 5,000, Best Screenplay EUR 3,000, and an Ethics Award EUR 2,000. ELIGIBILITY: international, applicants 18+; films must have been completed after 1 June 2025 and involve human/AI hybrid creation; a mandatory Ethics Notebook accompanies each submission. No submission fee. Festival screening at Forum des images, Paris, on 24 November 2026. Apply via FilmFreeway; deadline 30 September 2026.
NEXT ART AI is an open AI art competition run by the HOBAN Cultural Foundation, welcoming participants of all backgrounds regardless of career, nationality or age, and framed as a way to reflect on the future of AI art through new modes of expression and artistic experimentation. TWO CATEGORIES: AI IMAGE ART, for works in a single-image format at 150dpi or higher, submitted as JPG, JPEG, PNG or BMP up to 10MB; and AI VIDEO ART, open to a wide range of video formats including animation, motion graphics and live-action footage enhanced or transformed using AI, at 1080p or higher, under one minute, 30 or 60fps recommended, stereo 48kHz audio recommended, as mp4 (h.264) or mov. Video entries are submitted as a URL via YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox or OneDrive, or an alternative platform if those are restricted in your region; links that are inaccessible due to privacy settings may be excluded from judging. WHO CAN ENTER: individuals or teams of up to three including the representative, though you may not submit both as an individual and as part of a team. Team representatives create the account in their own name and all members submit a consent form for personal data. Applicants under 19 need a guardian's signed consent. One work may be submitted per category. RULES ON AI AND ASSETS: work must be original and created by the applicant or team, and must be image or video art created using generative AI platforms. Works that have previously won an award in another competition are not eligible. Free or paid external assets, game engines, AI frameworks, open-source tools and editing software may be used freely, but applicants must hold licences permitting commercial use for every element, and work infringing third-party rights is excluded. Even where external assets and editing software are used, the creative process must involve AI, whether AI-assisted direction, transformation, generation or other AI-based processes, and the choice of AI tools, the scope and method of their use, and the prompts themselves are all weighed in evaluating the creative use of AI. TIMELINE: applications open 1 September 2026 and close 30 September 2026 at 11:59pm KST, preliminary round early October, final round late October, announcement and ceremony early November, exhibition late November 2026. Organised and hosted by the HOBAN Cultural Foundation, sponsored by HOBAN Group, with Seoul Shinmun and EBN as media partners. Details and schedule are subject to change at the organiser's discretion.
An open call for at least 10 short performances of maximum 15 minutes for the 12th edition of Teatri Riflessi in Zafferana Etnea, Sicily. THE FORMAT: the competition champions the short performance in its own right, not as a reduction of a longer work nor as a sketch for a full-evening adaptation; its strength is the artistic immediacy and urgency it carries. The framing connects ancient Greek theatre, conceived as an outdoor competition for a large audience, to the more provocative tendencies of happenings and performance art that lean on the beholder's desire to participate. STRUCTURE: semi-finalists perform on the evenings of Thursday 15 and Friday 16 July 2027; the Programmers' Panel and the Scholars' & Critics' Panel determine the finalists, who perform again in the final on Sunday 18 July. The panels bring together around 30 Italian and international artistic directors, curators, festival and theatre programmers, journalists, critics and performing arts scholars, many from the Teatri Riflessi Network and Anticorpi XL Network; the full list is published in June 2027. Past partner organisations include Antistatic Festival (Sofia), ATER Fondazione, BIG Festival, Cantieri Danza, Circuito CLAPS, COORPI, Dance ICONS (Washington DC), Danza Urbana, Derida Dance Centre, EN-KNAP and Spanski Borci (Ljubljana), Fabbrica Europa, Festival Ammutinamenti, Cluny Danse (France), Danza Canarias dentro y fuera (Tenerife), FIND Festival, Fondazione Armunia and Festival Inequilibrio, Fondazione Claudia Lombardi per il teatro (Lugano), Fondazione Sipario Toscana, Fondazione Toscana Spettacolo, Galway Dance (Ireland), Interplay Festival (Turin), L'Arboreto Teatro Dimora, La Piccionaia, Movimento Danza, New Dance For Asia International Festival (Daegu), Puglia Culture, Toplocentrala (Sofia) and Umbria Danza Festival. MONEY: each selected performance receives a gross fee of EUR 500 to EUR 1,100 depending on cast size, plus a possible travel contribution of up to EUR 250. Awards are Best Performance EUR 1,200 (from the combined weighted scores of both panels, the Jury of the Final, the Youth Jury and the Citizens' Jury), Best Dramaturgy EUR 500 and the Scholars' and Critics' Award EUR 500 (both from the Scholars' & Critics' Panel), Best Direction EUR 500 and Best Performer EUR 500 (both from the Programmers' Panel), the 'Valentina Nicosia' Fund of EUR 500 (joint decision of both panels), the 'Sandra Bressan' research fund of EUR 1,800 (awarded by the Citizens' Jury to reinvite a company to Sicily to work with the community), and the Youth Jury Award of EUR 300 to a semi-finalist, alongside the Audience Special Mention, the Companies' Choice Award and the Technical Crew Award. Fees, reimbursements and prizes are paid after the festival, provided all regulations and deadlines are met. FEES TO APPLY: none. Only selected companies pay a EUR 50 deposit on selection, fully refunded after the festival. RULES: performances should aim for 15 minutes, with total stage occupancy including set-up and dismantling capped at 20 minutes. Multiple entries are allowed but need a separate form each. No major changes are permitted after selection; minor adjustments, especially cast substitutions, must be communicated in advance and authorised by IterCulture APS. Works in languages other than Italian are welcome and are presented with Italian and English surtitles prepared by IterCulture APS. APPLICATION: a digital form linked in Article 5 of the open call regulations, with Annex A for dramaturgy (the complete script where one exists, or for dance, physical theatre and non-text work a short document on the dramaturgical research and choreographic structure) and a full video recording of the complete work; excerpts and teasers are not accepted, and for rehearsed readings, directorial notes on costumes, lighting and set design are mandatory. COMMITMENT: rehearsal attendance is compulsory, with the day assigned by the Competition Manager after selection; companies must arrive in Zafferana Etnea by their rehearsal day (rehearsals run 13 and 14 July 2027) and stay until the festival closes at 23:30 on Sunday 18 July. Rehearsals and public events run mainly in afternoons and evenings; the only compulsory morning commitment is the panel feedback session on Sunday 18 July. Online information sessions are held on Google Meet on Tuesday 22 September 2026, with the English session at 19:30 CEST. Deadline 15 October 2026 at 5pm CET.
A bias bounty from Zindi, Humane Intelligence, Radiant Earth, and the Heising-Simons Foundation: measure coverage gaps in Overture Maps across US Census tracts by comparing it against Census TIGER/Line Roads, Microsoft US Building Footprints, USGS National Map critical facilities, and Census County Business Patterns. Submissions are automatically evaluated with a Bias Score assessing equity metrics across demographic and climate-vulnerability strata, surfacing whose neighbourhoods open map data underserves. PRIZES: 1st USD 4,500, 2nd USD 2,500, 3rd USD 1,500, Best Bias Discovery USD 1,000, Best Documentation USD 500 (USD 10,000 total), plus 10,000 Zindi points. ELIGIBILITY: open to all, teams of up to 4. HOW TO ENTER: create a Zindi account, download the sample submission files, compute coverage-gap scores per tract GEOID, and upload a CSV; 10 submissions per day, 300 total. Free to enter. DEADLINE: 31 October 2026.
The ARC Prize Foundation runs its 2026 competition for progress toward artificial general intelligence, with a USD 2,000,000 total prize pool across three tracks: the main Kaggle competition on the ARC-AGI-2 static reasoning benchmark, a track on ARC-AGI-3 interactive agent reasoning (second milestone 30 September 2026), and a paper prize for research that advances understanding of ARC-AGI performance. Milestone prizes run USD 25,000 / 10,000 / 2,500. Open to individuals and teams worldwide, entirely online via Kaggle. Winning entries must be open-sourced under permissive licenses to collect prizes. Main submission deadline 2 November 2026, paper track 8 November 2026; results announced 4 December 2026.