International AI Creator Award 2026 — what we ask of an entry, and what we promise back.
We want volume. A voter has only one vote per field, so submitting more work splits your own support rather than gaming the result — priority sorts itself out. That is why there is no cap.
Public Date is the earliest of: the date the work became viewable at its public URL, or its publication / release date. Eligibility is judged on this date, not on when the work was made.
Works with a Public Date from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2026 (provisional) are eligible.
We judge what a URL shows without a login. If the reviewer has to sign in, the work cannot be judged.
Work released in cinemas or otherwise not publicly streamable is judged on its teaser site — trailer, stills and credits are enough.
Deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE, UTC−12). If it is still the deadline date somewhere on Earth, you are in time.
An entry counts as received only after all three: Submit (fixes the content) → pay the review fee → Confirmed. All three must finish before the deadline.
Submitting without paying does not hold your place. If the deadline passes while the fee is unpaid, the entry is not received.
The work must be viewable at a URL with no gate — no login, no password, no paywall, no region lock.
Google Drive with restricted sharing · members-only pages · unlisted-but-expiring links · region-locked video
In addition to the public version, you may submit a full version for screening (higher resolution, longer cut, subtitles).
The full version is never published without a separate, written opt-in.
| ID | Item | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
title | Title | Required | 120 |
work_url | Public work URL (no gate) | Required | url |
summary | Summary — 500 characters or less, no URLs | Required | 500 |
representative | Submitting representative — the stakeholder who can grant screening and distribution permission | Required | text |
affiliation | Affiliation (studio, company, school, or none) | Optional | text |
dossier_url | Dossier — synopsis, concept, prompts, making-of, impact (Markdown URL) | Optional | markdown_url |
icon_1x1 | Icon image 1:1 (1024×1024) — no text | Required | image |
cover_16x9 | Cover art 16:9 (1920×1080) | Required | image |
clean_16x9 | Clean art 16:9 — the cover without any text | Required | image |
release_date | Release date — year, or year-month, or the exact day if you know it | Required | date_partial |
language | Language(s) of the work | Required | multiselect |
origin_region | Country or region the work is based in | Required | select |
poster_2x3 | Portrait key art 2:3 (1000×1500) — optional | Optional | image |
official_site | Official site, or a URL you would like us to know about | Optional | url |
| Field | What the URL points at | Extra items |
|---|---|---|
| Service Generative AI services and products | Live product page, App Store / Google Play listing, public demo video | try_url Where can a judge try it?launch_status Status |
| Commercial Film Film, streaming and series work made for release | YouTube, Vimeo, official streaming page | runtime Runtime (mm:ss)distributor Distributor / broadcaster |
| Independent Film Independent and personal productions, short film, video | YouTube, Vimeo, personal site | runtime Runtime (mm:ss) |
| Character, Manga & Webtoon Character design, manga, webtoon | 公開連載ページ, X thread, personal site | character_sheet_url Character sheetepisode_count Episodes / pages |
| Music, MV & Dance Music, music video, dance, virtual idol | YouTube, 公式MV, 配信リンク | credits_music Composer / performer creditsruntime Runtime (mm:ss) |
| Advertising, PV & Broadcast Advertising, PV, broadcast, social video, influencer work | 公開されたCM, ブランド公式チャンネル | client Client / brand (or 'spec work')aired_where Where it ran |
| Publishing Books, magazines, zines, digital publishing | 販売ページ, 試し読みURL, 公開PDF | isbn ISBN / catalogue numbersample_url Free sample (no gate) |
| Game, Tool & App Games, creative tools, apps | itch.io, Steam ページ, 公開デモ | play_url Where can a judge play or run it?platform Platform |
| Event / XR Film festivals, events, trade shows, metaverse | イベント記録映像, 公式レポート, ワールドURL | held_on When it was heldattendance Attendance / participants |
| Open Scientific and technical research; work that fits none of the other nine fields | 論文・記事, デモ映像, 公開リポジトリ | what_is_new What is new here? |
The original language is the one the creator writes in. The creator guarantees it — we never rewrite it.
English is the common language: it is what judges, media and voters outside your language read. You may write it yourself — then it is guaranteed by you, exactly like the original — or let AICU machine-translate it.
Machine translation is always labelled as machine translation, and the original is always one click away.
A creator can take over an auto-translation at any time; editing it flips the label to author-guaranteed.
| ID | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
promo_use | Required | ON | AICU may use this work in award promotion (site, social, press, on-stage). |
gallery_pickup | Required | ON | This work may be featured in the public gallery. |
media_partner_use | Optional | OFF | Partner media companies may also use the clean art and summary for coverage. |
screening_use | Optional | OFF | The full version may be screened at the award ceremony and related events. |
evaluation_acceptance | Required | ON | I understand that this work may be evaluated by statistics, by collective intelligence, by social comments, and by machine vision and other AI systems — and I agree to receive any evaluation with respect and to take it constructively. |
Proposed — not yet fixed. This section is published while it is still being decided, so that it can be argued with before it is settled.
Screening decides who is eligible. It never decides who is good. Everything after that is decided by people, in the open, with the counts visible while they move.
| Stage | When | Who | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Screening — eligibility only | エントリー〜2026-10-16 | Award office | Eligibility only: is the URL reachable without a login, is the Public Date in range, are the permissions given, does it breach the Code of Conduct. Not taste. |
| First round — open and free | 2026-10-26 〜 2026-11-15 (AoE) | Everyone. Free, no purchase, sign-in only at Confirm. | The cart-model public vote. One vote per field, ten fields. This round does not pick winners; it picks who stands on the stage. Each field selects 3 to 10 works as finalists. |
| Final round — with comment and critique | 2026-11-18 〜 11-20（授賞式期間） | Award Supporters (individual partners) | The final vote on the finalists, cast with a comment and a written critique attached, run live during the ceremony. A vote here is not a click — it comes with reasons, and the reasons are published with it. |
An Award Supporter is not a customer of the award; they take on a role in it.
First-round counts are published per field, and so is where each field drew its finalist line. Final-round critiques are published with the result. A count nobody can check is not a result, and a verdict with no reasons is not a critique.
An award is legitimate when you can see who decided, on what, and why — and when the people who decided can be argued with afterwards. Most contests are decided by famous names and corporate sponsors behind a closed door, and their legitimacy rests entirely on the prestige of those names: no reasons are published, so nothing can be checked. This award moves the burden the other way. Eligibility is mechanical. The first round is free and open to anyone. The final round is cast by people who agreed to the purpose and the Code of Conduct, who each get exactly one vote per field no matter what they gave, and who must publish a signed critique with it. Prestige is replaced by reasons on the record.
That legitimacy holds only while three things hold. Break any of them and this is an ordinary contest again. 1. The amount given never buys more votes. The moment it does, this is a sale of votes. 2. Every critique is published. A vote with no reasons is authority deciding quietly. 3. We never misname it. If the Award Supporters decide the final round, we write "chosen by the Award Supporters, with their critiques published" — not "chosen by the public". Misnaming the method damages an award more than the method ever could.
In the first round a voter votes across all ten fields, not only the field they came for. Ten votes, one per field. That is deliberate: it means every field is judged by the same body of people rather than by whoever happened to care about it, and it means no field can be carried by a small group simply because few people were watching it. Being asked about a field you know nothing about is the point — it is how a voter meets work they would never have looked for.
A partner may recommend works, at any level of support. A partner cannot vote and cannot influence a result. There is no amount of money that buys a place in the outcome. This is the point of the award, not a limitation of it: a tool that helped make many good works will do well here, but it does well through the creators who used it — the creator is what this award is for.
AICU Japan may recommend a work that already has a record — from an earlier contest, for example — with the creator's own consent. A recommended work enters as having passed screening and goes forward to the first round. There is no review fee.
A recommendation skips screening and nothing else. Screening decides whether a work is eligible; it never decides whether a work is good. A recommended work goes through the first round and the final round on exactly the same terms as every other work. It gets no extra votes and no different treatment.
The test is whether the work can be placed on the timeline. Two things have to be established:
- it has already been entered somewhere — an earlier contest, for example - the work demonstrably exists, and its public date is clear
Those two are exactly what screening checks. A recommendation means only that what has already been established is not checked a second time.
The page for the work says plainly that it was recommended; it is never made to look like an entry the creator submitted themselves. Even when recommended, whether to enter is the creator's decision — it takes their own click to agree.
Before anyone else has acted on your entry, you can delete it and nothing remains. Once it is public and people have voted or commented on it, deletion becomes withdrawal: the work comes down, but the fact that it took part does not silently vanish — other people's votes and words are theirs, and a result nobody can check is not a result.
| Stage | What you can do | What happens | Review fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft | Delete completely | Deleted completely. The id is retired and not reused. | No charge yet, so no refund question arises |
| Confirmed, not yet screened | Cancel | Cancelled. Removed before it was ever public. | Full refund of the review fee within 14 days (before review begins) |
| Published, before voting | Withdraw | The work page is unpublished and it leaves the gallery. The entry id shows as withdrawn. | No refund — the review has been performed |
| Voting open | Withdraw | Withdrawn from the ballot. Hearts already given to it are released — each voter's slot in that field opens again, so nobody loses a vote because someone else withdrew. | No refund |
| Nominated or awarded | Withdraw in part | The work page can be unpublished and your name can be replaced with a pen name or removed, but the result itself stays on the public record at cert.aicu.ai. A verifiable award that can be erased on request is not verifiable. | No refund |
Regardless of stage: you can always correct your own text, replace your images, ask for your name to be minimised, and export everything you submitted. Requests go to award@aicu.ai.
If a work infringes someone's rights, or breaches the Code of Conduct, the award office removes it at any stage — that is not the creator's choice to make.
These regulations define the 2026 edition. They may be updated within reason as entries come in and as we talk with entrants, partners and the wider public. Every change is tracked, and the history is public.
A change that makes an existing entry ineligible never applies to entries already received.
Source of truth: regulations.yaml · promises.yaml ·
roadmap.yaml — edition 2026, updated 2026-08-29
Code of Conduct · Privacy · award@aicu.ai