How to choose screenwriting contests and fellowships

What a good result can do

Thousands of writers pay to enter screenwriting contests every year, and for a few of them a result changes what happens next. A placement in a contest people know gives you a line for a query letter that can make a busy manager ask to read the script. The better contests send their finalists' scripts to managers, agents and producers, or publish the results where those people look. Some pay cash. A few lead to a meeting, a mentor or a place on a programme, which is often worth more than the prize money.

Most contests can't do any of that. A win in a contest nobody in the business has heard of means little to the people you want to reach, and even a strong placement holds a door open for a few weeks; getting through it takes a second script and some persistence. Entry fees are one way of getting a script read, and they sit beside the others: queries, labs and fellowships, short films, and the people you already know.

Signs a contest is worth the fee

Twenty minutes on a contest's own site will tell you most of what you need to know before paying.

• Named people in the final round. Look for the judges by name and job: producers, managers, development executives at companies you can look up. Then see who reads the early rounds, and whether the contest says anything about their experience.
• Past winners you can trace. Search the names of the last few years' winners and finalists. In a contest that has run for a decade, some of them should now have credits, representation or a staff job.
• Prizes stated plainly, including what finalists get. "Industry exposure" means little until it names the companies, how many scripts go to them and what happens next. Cash prizes should give an amount and say when they are paid.
• Age and standing. A contest in its tenth or twentieth year has a record you can check, and the people reading your query letter are more likely to know the name. Ask writers who have entered.
• Entries per year, if it publishes them. Set the number of finalists against the number of entries for a rough sense of the odds.
• Feedback, and who writes it. Some contests include notes in the fee and others sell them as an extra. They help most when the contest says who writes them and how long they run.
• Rules that leave your rights alone. The copyright should stay with you, and if a prize comes with an option or a first look, the rules should say so before you enter.

Warning signs

Any one of these can have an innocent explanation. When two or three turn up together, the fees are probably the business.

• Dozens of categories with a winner in each, so that nearly everyone who pays places somewhere.
• Deadlines extended again and again, each extension with its own fee.
• Prizes made up mostly of the sponsors' products and services: software, coverage, consultations.
• Laurels you pay for, or a placement that arrives with an offer to buy something.
• Results that come late, or never, or without names.
• Pressure to buy notes or a rewrite service to improve your chances in the next round.

Our events list, and its rule

Our screenwriting events list is a free list of contests, fellowships, labs, festivals with script awards, pitch events and conferences around the world, each with its deadlines and fees. Every date and fee on it is read on the organiser's own page, and the list is checked daily, so closed calls leave it and new ones arrive.

For contests it keeps one rule of our own. A contest that charges an entry fee is listed only when its site names its judges or readers, or its past winners. A free contest is always listed, with a note when it names neither. Fellowships, labs and conferences choose people by application or sell a seat, so the rule doesn't apply to them. The bar is low on purpose, because a contest can name its judges and still be wrong for your script, but a paid contest that won't say who reads the scripts or who has won doesn't get a place.

The list filters by kind, region, country, format, language and fee. You can start from the contests alone, from fellowships and labs, or from everything closing in the next 30 days.

Fellowships and labs

A fellowship or a lab chooses a writer as much as a script. It usually asks for a writing sample and something about you, such as a statement, a short biography or the project you would work on, and often interviews at the last stage. In return it gives time, teaching, mentors and introductions, and the best-funded programmes pay a stipend. Many are free to apply to. Some European labs charge nothing to apply and then ask the writers they select for a participation fee, so read the whole call first.

These are the main kinds, with the programmes we checked.

• Studio and network writing programmes. In the US, several studios and networks run paid programmes for new television writers. They usually open once a year, ask for an original pilot and sometimes a spec episode of a current show, and take very few people.
• The Academy Nicholl Fellowships. For many years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ran the Nicholl as an open competition with an entry fee. Its current page describes a different arrangement. Scripts now reach it through partner university programmes, labs, festivals and filmmaker programmes, which vet them and send them in to be read by Academy members. The other way in is one of two public portals, run by The Black List and the Writers Guild Foundation. Each portal charges its own fee and passes on only the scripts its readers pick, and in 2026 each was open for about four weeks in June and July. Much of the advice online still describes the old contest, so read the Academy's page before planning around it.
• Sundance Institute. For features, Sundance takes a single application, its Development Track, and considers it for the Screenwriters Lab, the Screenwriters Intensive and the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and Commissioning Grant. It is for screenwriters, directors and writer-directors developing a first or second fiction feature, and the next window runs from 30 March to 20 April 2027. Its episodic programme offers a $17,000 Alfred P. Sloan grant for an original half-hour or hour-long series built around science, technology or a historical figure or event, and takes applications until 3 December 2026.
• Broadcasters, funds and labs in Europe. Public broadcasters in the UK and across Europe run open calls and writers' schemes, national film funds give writing grants, and development labs work with a group of projects over several months. Many are tied to a country or a language. The current calls are on our list under fellowships and labs, with what each asks for and when it closes.

Fees, deadlines and a season's budget

Most paid contests have tiered deadlines: an early one with the lowest fee, then regular and late ones, and often an "extended" or "final" deadline after those, each dearer than the last. In October 2026 the US contests on our list charged roughly $35 to $60 for a feature at their first deadline and $55 to $100 at their last. The gap between the first and the last tier ran from about $20 to $50 per entry, which adds up over a year.

Choosing the year's entries in one sitting, with a calendar and a sum in mind, costs less than paying one late fee at a time. Say Maya has a feature she has rewritten twice and £250 to spend on it over the coming year. Her plan might look like this.

The dollar fees come to $145, so even with the reserve she stays well inside £250 at any recent exchange rate. She leaves out the contests with twenty genre categories, anything that names nobody, and the notes offered at checkout.

Keep a record of every entry: the contest, the draft you sent, the date, the fee, when results are due and what happened. At the end of the year it shows which contests repaid their fees.

Preparing the script for entry

• Format. Readers expect standard screenplay format, and a page that looks wrong gets read with suspicion from the start. Our formatting guide has every rule.
• Page limits. Most contests set a maximum for each category, and some a minimum. Check whether the title page counts. Squeezing the margins or the font to get under the limit shows on the page, so cut scenes instead.
• Anonymity. Some contests read blind and forbid your name anywhere in the file, and some disqualify a script that breaks the rule. Take your name and contact details off the title page, and look at the PDF's document properties, where a word processor may have filed your name as the author. Our title page guide suggests keeping a second title page for these entries.
• The file. A PDF, unless the rules ask for something else. Name it the way they ask, and when they don't say, the title will do, as in Low_Tide.pdf. A name like LowTide_FINAL_v7_new.pdf tells the reader more than you meant to, and for a blind read your own name stays out of the file name too.
• The entry form. Most forms ask for a logline and some for a synopsis. Write them ahead of the deadline, with the same care as the script, using our guides to the logline and the synopsis.
• The first ten pages. Proofread them more than once, on paper if you can, since an early-round reader may decide on them.

In ScriptopusFile, Export opens the export dialog. In the web app, untick Scene numbers in the Script PDF before you make a contest copy, because a spec script goes out without them. The PDF starts with your cover page, so for a blind read, take your name and contact details off the cover page first. The file name it suggests is the title followed by the date and time, which you can change to whatever the rules ask for.

After you place

A placement counts for most in the weeks after it is announced, while it is still news.

• Put it in your query letter with the contest's full name, the year and the exact level reached, so that anyone can check it. Lead with your best result, and drop the smaller ones once you have a big one. Our query letter guide shows where the line goes.
• Answer introductions quickly. If the contest passes your script to a manager or a producer, reply that week, with the PDF ready to send.
• Have the next script close to ready. Anyone who likes the first one will ask what else you have, and the record of which draft placed where keeps you from sending an older version.

If you don't place, the result says less than it feels like it does. Early rounds are often decided by a single reader, and contests have different tastes. Look for a pattern across several results, or notes from different readers that agree, before you take the script apart.

Questions

Sources and further reading

1. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, read on 22 October 2026, and its announcement of the 2026 to 2027 partners (8 June 2026).
2. Sundance Institute, Deadlines, read on 22 October 2026, for the Development Track and the Episodic Alfred P. Sloan Grant.
3. Our screenwriting events list, with deadlines and fees taken from each organiser's own page. The fee ranges on this page come from its US feature contests in October 2026.