Voting is open! 372 works, 202 creators, 21 countries and regions — looking back at the entries, and 10 works from the largest field, Independent Film

As of 28 October, the early count is 372 works from 202 creators. The first entry arrived on 20 September, so all of these works came in over roughly 30 days. Open entries are now closed; from here on, we will be adding works recommended by our partner organizations.

Here is how they break down by field.

Video-generation AI became part of everyday life almost overnight this past year. AICU Magazine Vol.20, "This Is the Year to Start AI Video" (January 2026), is on our timeline — and 2026 really has turned into a year when AI video is blooming everywhere. Even so, Music & MV and Character & Manga each passed 60 works, so this is far from a film-only award.

Yes. Some entered a series across different fields; others entered a song and its music video separately. That is entirely within the regulations — in fact, we think it is exactly how creators of the generative-AI era deserve to be evaluated, through rigorous judging.

Recommended works from our partner organizations are still being counted, but so far entries have come from 21 countries and regions. Japan has the most, followed by Korea, then Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, China, Australia and Brazil.

I think our partnership with GAMFF, an international AI and metaverse film festival held in Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea, played a part. GAMFF sets out to discover new forms of visual expression and storytelling made with AI, and to connect creators with the content industry. Its 2026 edition drew 3,403 works from 97 countries, with total prize money of about ¥11.5 million and a grand prize of about ¥2.3 million. GAMFF is also exhibiting at Inter BEE 2026, where the AICU Award holds its ceremony! Thank you for such fine recommended works!

These ten are in order of the "score" on the public live board. The score is calculated from the number of people who sent emo, comments, and plays and views in the gallery. The algorithm has been balanced, and we think it does a good job of surfacing the works people are excited about right now.

Right. Abusing emo is penalized, with a cool-down period. And even thousands of emo are counted on a logarithmic scale. So please send your emo freely, however you feel. The comments are lively too — enough that people are asking for a proper discussion feature! It's wonderful to see conversations crossing languages.

Each work's page has a synopsis in the creator's own words. Rather than us paraphrasing it here, we think it's best to read it there.

As for statistics on the YouTube works, there are currently 172 videos, 21 hours 35 minutes in total. The shortest are A26V-47 "Who?" (13 seconds), A26E-2 "3D Photo Studio" (16 seconds) and A26B-5 "MINA × GIRI" (16 seconds).

The longest are A26C-50 "Yumemi Nana" (7 hours 32 minutes), A26V-44 "Giving Images to a Thousand-Year-Old Song" (1 hour 2 minutes) and A26C-12 "Otobe Hisui AI Live" (1 hour 1 minute).

A26C-50 alone accounts for about a third of the total — a proud title-holder for longest work. Even without it, the remaining 171 videos add up to about 14 hours.

On the live board, you can see the rankings for all ten fields. It switches to the next field every 10 seconds.

Please share it! From the "Share" button on the work's page you can post straight to X and elsewhere. Work-page URLs are short, so you can paste them as they are.

You can write comments on a work right on its page. For thoughts about the Award as a whole, please post on X with #AICUAward. It gives the creators — and us at the Award office — something to build on next.