Higgsfield Talent Contest: $1,000,000 in Cash Prizes for AI Films

Higgsfield’s Talent Contest offers $1,000,000 in cash prizes across 20 awards for original AI films. Creators can enter solo or in teams with films running three to seven minutes. Submissions close November 26, 2026, at 6:00 PM UTC, with potential winners announced December 3. This guide covers eligibility, production requirements, submissions, grants, judging, voting, and what happens to projects after submission.

Key Takeaways

• Free to enter: No purchase or paid subscription is required. Generation credits are used as usual.
• Original films, three to seven minutes: Create your film in a dedicated contest project on Higgsfield during the creation window.
• $1,000,000 in cash prizes: Three main prizes, two Audience Choice prizes, and 15 category awards.
• Two shortlist routes: Community engagement and selection by Higgsfield’s creative team.
• Credit grants: Selected public projects may receive credits to support production.
• Public disclosure at the deadline: Every submitted project, including Private entries, becomes permanently public at the submission deadline, together with its prompts, generation history, and assets.

Who Can Enter the Higgsfield Talent Contest?

The contest is open to individuals who are at least 18 and have reached the age of majority in their country, if higher. You need a Higgsfield account in good standing when you create your contest project and when you submit.

You can enter alone or as a team of up to four people. The project owner serves as Team Leader, acts as the contest contact, and receives any prize payment. The team roster is fixed when the entry is submitted. Every member must meet the eligibility requirements and accept the rules.

Entries must be submitted by individuals, rather than through a company or agency. Additional accounts created to obtain credits, grants, votes, or entries are prohibited.

Higgsfield employees cannot participate. Creator Partnership Program members and contractors may participate if they are not involved in judging, selection, or grant decisions.

For eligibility requirements and location-specific restrictions, see the “Who can enter” section of the Official Rules on the contest page.

What Kind of Film Can You Submit?

The theme is open. Your entry must be an original film created for this contest, with a qualifying running time of 3:00 to 7:00 inclusive. Titles, credits, the Higgsfield packshot, and padding added solely to meet the minimum are excluded from the qualifying running time.

Films made before the contest opened or for another competition cannot be submitted. Each entry needs its own contest project so that its materials and generation history can be reviewed.

The official watermark and packshot are added automatically. Keep them intact in both the submitted film and the version published on social media. Auto-cover and Katana are optional, and using them does not affect judging.

What Are the Prizes?

The prize pool consists of cash awards paid in US dollars.

The three winners within each category receive equal prizes. Category names are listed on the contest page.

Each participant or team can receive only one prize. Awards do not stack: if an entrant qualifies for multiple awards, they receive the largest.

Potential winners must complete verification within 14 days of notification, including identity checks, required declarations, and tax documentation. Failure to complete the process may result in the prize passing to another entry.

Payments are made within 45 days after verification is complete. For team entries, the Team Leader receives the payment and is responsible for distributing it among members. Recipients are responsible for applicable taxes, and legally required withholding may apply.

What Is the Contest Timeline?

All times below are in UTC.

Dates may move later, but the creation window will not be shortened and deadlines will not move earlier. The Timeline tab on the contest page carries the current schedule.

How Do You Join and Submit?

1. Create Your Contest Project

Open the Talent Contest page, select Join the Contest, sign in, and complete the Apply form with your name, email, and country.

This opens a dedicated contest project in Cinema Studio. Create and store your film’s generations and materials there.

2. Choose Public or Private

Choose whether to share your work in progress with the community or keep the project visible only to your team until the deadline. The differences affect engagement-based selection and access to credit grants.

3. Create Your Film and Publish the Social Post

Once your film is ready, publish it in a public post on Instagram, YouTube, or X. Both the post and the account must be viewable without signing in or following the account.

The social version must retain the Higgsfield watermark and packshot. Keep the post available until the winners are announced. If the platform removes the post or blocks the account after submission, that removal is not itself treated as a violation.

4. Submit from Your Project

Use the Submit button in the contest project before the deadline. A complete entry requires:

• The final film submitted from its contest project, with the required branding.
• A link to the public social media post.
• For teams, confirmation of the members and each member’s acceptance of the rules.

Missing any required component makes the entry ineligible for consideration. You can replace the final film before the deadline.

The social post is a submission requirement. Its views, likes, and other social media engagement are not judged.

Which Tools and Assets Can You Use?

AI Images and Video

All AI images and video appearing in the finished film must be generated in your contest project on higgsfield.ai during the creation window. You can use any Higgsfield model.

AI visuals from other services can be used only as source material for a Qualifying Higgsfield Edit. Upload the external asset into your contest project and use a Higgsfield model to create completely new material. Only that new result may appear in the final film.

Upscaling, sharpening, cropping, trimming, changing speed, adjusting color, or changing format or resolution does not qualify. Simply animating an external image or extracting a frame from an external video is also insufficient.

Keep the external source file, the name of the service used, the Higgsfield generation record, model, settings, prompt, and resulting asset in the project. The external source may predate the contest, but the qualifying generation must happen during the creation window.

Editing, Compositing, and 3D

Traditional editing and manual work in tools such as Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, After Effects, Photoshop, and Blender are allowed.

Their generative AI features follow the external-source restrictions. Outputs from generative fill, AI object insertion, AI upscaling, or AI frame interpolation cannot go directly into the finished film without qualifying regeneration on Higgsfield.

Music, Voices, and Sound

Music, voices, dialogue, and lip-sync must be AI-generated. You may create them with any AI tool, on Higgsfield or elsewhere, including before the contest begins.

Human-composed or performed music, licensed or stock music, live instruments, human vocals, and human-recorded voice-over are not allowed, even if you hold the rights.

Sound effects may be non-AI if you have the necessary rights. Voices cannot clone or imitate an identifiable real person.

Project Materials

Keep all generations and source materials in the contest project so the finished film can be verified. Official Higgsfield materials, including open-source packs, Higgsfield projects, and Academy drops, may be used.

What Content Is Not Allowed?

Characters and voices must be fully fictional. The likeness or voice of an identifiable real person is prohibited, including your own, a team member’s, a friend’s, a celebrity’s, or a historical figure’s. Consent does not make the use eligible.

Other prohibited content includes:

• Unauthorized use of another party’s characters, franchises, brands, logos, music, or artwork. The contest rules exclude fan films based on existing franchises.
• Pornography or sexualized content.
• Violence against real people.
• Political statements, campaigning, propaganda, or misinformation.
• Religious statements, preaching, or insults.
• Illegal, defamatory, or rights-infringing material.

Real children and their voices cannot appear. Fictional characters under 18 must not resemble a real child or appear in sexualized, romantic, harmful, violent, or abusive contexts.

Review the complete content restrictions in the Official Rules before developing your film.

What Becomes Public at the Deadline?

Every submitted project becomes permanently public, including:

• The final film and work in progress.
• The cover and description.
• Prompts and generation history.
• Project assets, including external source files.

Submitting a Private project early does not reveal it before the deadline. A Public project without a submitted final film remains visible but does not compete. An unsubmitted Private project stays private.

Can You Get Credits to Make Your Film?

Higgsfield’s creative team may select Public projects for production credit grants. There is no separate application.

Grant credits can be used only in the contest project that receives them. They cannot be transferred or exchanged for money, and they expire at the final submission deadline. Unused credits are not refunded or carried over.

A project receiving a grant must remain Public through the deadline. The team may also provide optional creative recommendations, which do not constitute ongoing mentorship.

Grants and recommendations do not guarantee shortlist selection or affect jury scoring. Grants are separate from the $1,000,000 cash prize pool and do not count toward the one-prize limit.

How Does a Film Reach the Shortlist?

Every submitted entry first goes through screening for compliance with eligibility, runtime, format, submission, generation-history, source-asset, and content requirements.

The shortlist then combines two routes.

Engagement Shortlist

Up to 25 Public projects can qualify through community engagement on higgsfield.ai. Signals include likes, comments, followers, and project-page views from first publication until the deadline.

Only organic engagement from users with an active paid subscription at the time of the action counts. Inauthentic activity is excluded, and the weighting of individual signals is not published. Twenty-five is the maximum number selected through this route, rather than a guaranteed shortlist size.

Team Selection

Higgsfield’s creative team selects additional films, including Private entries revealed at the deadline. There is no fixed number of selections through this route.

All shortlisted films compete equally for every award.

How Does the Jury Choose Winners?

An independent jury of filmmakers and industry professionals selects the first-, second-, and third-place winners and the 15 category award winners. The jury will be announced on the contest page before Audience Choice voting opens.

Each shortlisted film receives scores from 1 to 10 across six equally weighted criteria:

Ties are resolved first by Originality & Concept, then by Directing & Storytelling. Judging decisions are final.

How Does Audience Choice Voting Work?

Audience Choice is a separate vote among shortlisted films. It runs from November 30 at 12:00 AM UTC through December 2 at 11:59 PM UTC.

Users need an active paid Higgsfield subscription when voting. Each eligible user may cast one vote per shortlisted film and may change or withdraw votes before voting closes. Participants cannot vote for a project they are part of.

Likes and engagement collected during the creation period do not carry over. Audience Choice starts with a separate vote.

Creators may invite their communities to watch and vote. Fake accounts, automated voting, and other manipulation are prohibited. The two films receiving the most valid votes win the Audience Choice awards.

Who Owns the Film and Project Materials?

You or your team retain ownership of the film. Publishing a project or submitting an entry grants Higgsfield a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive license to use the film and project materials for promotion, including on its website, social channels, advertising, and promotion of this and future contests.

For Public projects, that permission begins with the first publication, even if the project later becomes Private or is never submitted. For Private projects, it begins upon submission.

External source files have narrower treatment: Higgsfield may display them on the website while they are public, but does not use them in advertising.

Once prompts become public, other Higgsfield users may use them for their own generations on higgsfield.ai. This does not give them permission to reuse your project’s videos, images, or audio.

Keep generation records, prompts, files, and external sources for 24 months after the deadline. Higgsfield may request these materials to verify how the film was made. An entry may be disqualified if the required materials cannot be provided. See the Official Rules for the full licensing and verification terms.

Where Can You Find Inspiration and Production Help?

Explore Previous Films

The Higgsfield Global Film Festival gallery is a place to study earlier films. Watch how creators establish a story, connect shots, use sound, and build toward an ending.

For a production example, read how Eric Hsiao made THE THAW, a six-minute drama created solo over approximately three and a half weeks of part-time work.

The Global Film Festival is a separate competition. Use its films for inspiration and follow the Talent Contest’s own rules for your entry.

Find Tool Guidance in Creator Hub

The Higgsfield Creator Hub covers model selection, tools, settings, and credits, including guidance for Cinema Studio and Supercomputer. Test a technique on one shot before applying it throughout your film.

Build Skills with Higgsfield Academy

Higgsfield Academy offers seven beginner lessons with an estimated running time of 90 minutes. Topics include prompting, references, camera movement, and improving generations, with PDF guides and practical exercises.

Lessons are free to watch. Completing required homework and unlocking later lessons requires an active subscription and credits.

Get Feedback in Discord

Join the Higgsfield Discord community and visit these contest channels:

• #talent-contest-info: The Higgsfield team posts official contest updates and announcements.
• #contest-chat: Chat with other participants, share works in progress, and discuss ideas.

To report a suspected rule violation, use the Report option on the project page.

What Support Is Available Beyond the Contest?

The Higgsfield Creator Partnership Program offers ongoing support to accepted creators, including a monthly plan, credit support for larger projects, early access to models and features, and direct contact with the team.

Partners can also access a creator community, audience-growth guidance, and opportunities to have their work featured. Applications are handled through the program’s own page.