Every festival deadline in December 2026.
Updated: 9 hours ago
Third edition of the festival ledger. It covers December 2026 in full: every submission deadline inside the month, every festival running inside it, and what moved since the report. This is aggregation and it says so. Every date below was re-checked on November 10, 2026, rather than copied forward, and each line says where I read it.
One thing changed in the method this month, and it changed the post. FilmFreeway refused every automated read, so a date appears below as confirmed only if the festival publishes it on its own website. Eight of the sixteen dated December deadlines did not survive that test. That is the month’s finding, and it is near the bottom.
Every confirmed date below is also a calendar you can subscribe to, with the fee and source in each entry and a reminder a week out. Add the GPS deadline calendar in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. It updates with each month’s ledger.
Disclosure before anything else: I run theater operations for Austin Film Festival, which comes up twice below.
Seven things close in the first ten days.
A third-Thursday ledger gives a December 1 deadline about two weeks of notice. For a final tier, where the fee has roughly doubled since the summer, two weeks is thin. So this block goes first.
December 1. True/False, Final, 8 p.m. CT. $95 for a feature and $60 for a short, with student rates at $75 and $45. Their fee waiver window closes November 20 at 8 p.m. CT, which is sooner than the deadline itself. The 2027 festival is in Columbia, Missouri. From truefalse.org.
December 1. Fantasia, Earlybird. The report carries this date. Fantasia’s own submission pages would not load for me today, and the only other listing I found gives an April 15, 2027 closing date and names no December tier. Treat December 1 as unconfirmed. The 2027 festival runs July 15 to August 1 in Montreal.
December 2. Santa Barbara, Final. $125 for a feature and $80 for a short. The ladder behind it was $70 at the August 7 earlybird, $90 at the September 18 regular, and $115 at the October 30 late. The 42nd runs February 3 to 13, 2027. From sbiff.org.
December 2. Tribeca, Official deadline, shorts and music videos. $70, with a student discount on request and a flat $50 for music videos. Features are not on this date. Theirs is December 16. The Digital Creators and Games tracks close today too. The 26th runs June 3 to 12, 2027, in New York. From tribecafilm.com.
December 2. SFFILM, features and mid-length. Shorts closed November 11. SFFILM’s entry-info page is still serving the 69th festival from April 2026, and its current filmmaker FAQ confirms the 70th runs April 22 to May 2, 2027 and then sends you to FilmFreeway without printing a ladder. The December 2 date comes from a trade listing, not from SFFILM. Unconfirmed.
December 9. Florida, Extended. The report carries this date and a trade listing agrees, but floridafilmfestival.com is still showing the April 2026 festival, and its 2027 call for entries exists only as a press release I could not read. The 36th runs April 9 to 18, 2027. Unconfirmed.
December 10. Hot Docs, Regular. CAD $120 for a feature, which here includes mid-length and episodic, and CAD $50 for a short, plus 13% HST inside Canada. The earlybird was CAD $70 and $35 and is struck through on their page. The late tier on January 4 is CAD $165 and $70. The 2027 festival runs April 23 to May 2 in Toronto. From hotdocs.ca.
The rest of the month.
In date order. Where a festival does not publish the date on its own site, the line says so rather than repeating it.
December 8. Camden. The report flags a possible December 8 opening for the 2027 cycle. Points North is still serving the 22nd edition’s page, for a festival that ran September 17 to 20, 2026, and publishes no 2027 call. There is nothing to submit to yet.
December 11. Provincetown. The report calls this the Regular tier for the 29th edition. Provincetown publishes no 2027 ladder at all: its submit page confirms the 29th runs June 9 to 13, 2027, while its filmmaker FAQ still serves the 28th edition’s ladder, which ran from November 2025 to February 2026. A trade listing gives one 2027 deadline, February 12. I would not plan a December submission here without writing to them first.
December 15. Visions du Réel, Final. CHF 50 for a feature and CHF 40 for a short. There are only two tiers and the other was the November 2 early at CHF 35 and CHF 25. The 58th runs April 9 to 18, 2027, in Nyon. From visionsdureel.ch.
December 15. WorldFest-Houston, Late. The 60th runs April 30 to May 8, 2027. There is a Final tier after it, January 15, 2027, which appears in neither the report nor last month’s ledger. Their own page prices the Main tier at $100 for a feature and $70 for a short, while its deadline text puts Late at $115 and $80 and Final at $130 and $90. The table and the text disagree with each other on the fees. They agree on the dates. From worldfest.org.
December 15. Miami, Late. The report carries this. Miami’s call for entries is live for the right edition and its important-dates section renders empty. A trade listing gives a single deadline, January 8, 2027, and no December tier. The 44th runs April 1 to 11, 2027. Unconfirmed, and the two sources disagree.
December 15. Cleveland, Late. CIFF publishes no deadlines on its own site at all. Its filmmakers page says every deadline, category and fee lives on FilmFreeway and that FilmFreeway is the only way to submit, and its machine-readable index says the 51st festival’s details arrive in mid-November. Last month I told you Cleveland’s final was November 15. See the corrections.
December 16. Tribeca, Extended deadline, features. $115, up from $90 at the November 18 official deadline and $70 at the October 21 early. The 26th runs June 3 to 12, 2027. From tribecafilm.com.
December 17. SIFF, Regular. $100 for a feature and $80 for a short. Early was $75 and $60 on October 1, and the late tier is $125 and $100. SIFF’s own page prints that late date as “January 7, 2026,” which is impossible; work to January 7, 2027. The 53rd runs May 13 to 23, 2027. From siff.net.
December 31. Maine, Earlybird. The report carries this date. miff.org would not load for me today and its submit button goes to FilmFreeway. Its own homepage does confirm the 30th edition runs July 9 to 18, 2027, in Waterville. The deadline is unconfirmed, and the last ladder Maine published had no earlybird tier on it.
December, no date published. Austin Film Festival opens its 2027 film and script competitions. AFF’s own competition page says the 2027 competitions will open in December of 2026 and prints nothing further, no ladder and no fees. If you are waiting on it, watch the page rather than the calendar.
Running in December.
December is the thinnest month on the circuit, and that is most of what there is to say about it. The report’s master list has exactly one festival running inside it. Here is what I could confirm.
Sun Valley, Idaho. December 2 to 6. The 15th edition. Sun Valley left its old March slot for December in 2025, and its own site now carries December dates, passes and a year-round screening series, so the report’s December listing is right. One thing to flag: the homepage header says December 2 to 6 and a key-dates block on the same page says December 3 to 7. Call them before you book a flight. From sunvalleyfilmfestival.org.
Whistler, British Columbia. December 2 to 6. The 26th edition. From whistlerfilmfestival.com.
Anchorage, Alaska. December 4 to 13. The 26th annual. From anchoragefilmfestival.org.
Torino, Italy. November 24 to December 2. The 44th, and mostly a November festival. From torinofilmfest.org.
In Texas, two, and neither one confirms its own dates. CineSol in the Rio Grande Valley, December 5 to 6, and Behind the Pine Curtain in Lufkin, December 18 to 19, both per the Texas Film Commission’s event calendar. cinesol.com says the 33rd annual schedule is coming soon and gives no dates; the Lufkin festival’s own page would not load. The state and city listings also disagree on CineSol’s city, one saying the Rio Grande Valley and one saying McAllen. Last year it ran December 5 to 7 in Brownsville.
And one that is not running. Red Sea pulled its sixth edition, which had been set for December 3 to 12 in Jeddah, and plans to return late in 2027; The National reported it on September 21. Dubai’s return is December 2027, not this year, per The National on September 17. If you are reading a festival calendar that still lists either one this December, that calendar is stale.
News of note.
Austin Film Festival announced its 33rd-edition winners on November 1. Sweet Milk Lake (Harvey Zielinski) took Narrative Feature and Strange Ashes: The Untold Story of Elisabeth Elliot (Laura Waters Hinson) took Documentary Feature. Pickpockets (D.C. Fairhurst) won Comedy Vanguard and All the Way Down (Collin Davis and Matthew Valdez-Litwiller) won Dark Matters. In shorts, Paper Plane (Saoirse Ronan) won Narrative, Buried Under Years of Dust (Sophie Sartain) Documentary, How Not to Die on an Alien Planet (Carlos F. Puertolas) Animated, and Rabbit Heart (Stella Fachinger) Narrative Student. On the script side, Sisters (Zenas Cao) won Drama Feature, Pure Intentions (Sarah Peele) Comedy, DYSCOPIA (Bobby Marino) Horror, Louis & PUCK (Parker Rawlins and William Cowser) Sci-Fi, and The Semicolon (Aaron Roman) Short Screenplay. From the festival’s own release.
Lone Star’s 20th edition is running, and its end date is still unsettled. This is the second ledger in a row to say so. NBC DFW on November 7, the Fort Worth Business Press on October 7 and BroadwayWorld on October 21 all have it running November 4 to 13. Southlake Style on October 14 and the Texas Film Commission’s own listing have it ending November 11. The two listings that name the closing gala both put it on Friday, November 13, at Bowie House. The festival’s own site would not load for me. No awards had been announced when this was written.
Busan’s 31st edition closed on October 15, and the result is in. Midday Meal (Majid Majidi) won Best Film, Lee Yun Chan won Best Director for To Be Ordinary, and Eddie Cahyono took the Special Jury Award for My Mother. The Korea Times, October 15. Last month’s ledger said it could not carry this.
DOC NYC added two awards for 2026. An Archival Storytelling Competition, restricted to Main Slate films whose sourced material is not AI-generated, with ten nominees, and the $2,500 Shine Global Resilience Award. BroadwayWorld reported the slate and the awards on October 8. The festival runs in person November 11 to 19 and online through November 29.
Tallinn Black Nights changed its artistic leadership for its 30th edition. Triin Tramberg is the new Artistic Director, and Tiina Lokk, who founded the festival, moves to strategy and development while staying CEO, per the festival’s own announcement. PÖFF 30 runs November 6 to 22.
Eight of December’s sixteen deadlines are not on the festival’s own website.
Count the month. Sixteen dated submission deadlines fall inside December 2026, across the report’s list plus the two festivals it missed. Eight of them are published today on the festival’s own website: True/False, Santa Barbara, Tribeca twice, Hot Docs, Visions du Réel, WorldFest-Houston and SIFF. The other eight are not.
Six of those eight are the festival’s own choice. Cleveland says outright that its deadlines live on FilmFreeway and that FilmFreeway is the only way to submit. Provincetown’s site serves the ladder that closed last February. Florida’s serves April 2026. SFFILM’s serves the festival it held in April 2026. Miami’s call for entries is live for the right edition with the dates section blank. Camden has not opened a 2027 cycle at all. The remaining two, Fantasia and Maine, I could not read today, which is my limitation and not theirs.
The report’s argument was that festival websites go stale. December sharpens it. Six of these festivals publish no current deadline on their own site at all, and the date has been handed to a submission platform that will take your money at whichever tier you happen to arrive at.
That is what the gap costs, because December is where ladders end. Santa Barbara is $125 now and was $70 in August. Tribeca features are $115 now and were $70 in October. SIFF is $100 now, was $75 on October 1, and goes to $125 on January 7. Submit those three in December and you pay $340. The same three at their earliest tiers would have cost $215. The $125 difference is the price of finding out late, and finding out late is easier when the date is not on the festival’s site.
Hot Docs runs the same shape in Canadian dollars: CAD 70 at the earlybird it has already closed, CAD 120 on December 10, CAD 165 on January 4. The useful part of this list, though, is the eight dates I could not confirm. Open those eight FilmFreeway listings yourself, or write to the festival, before you plan a December submission.
Corrections to the November ledger.
Four to last month’s ledger, and the first one has been costing money since September.
I wrote that the full festival report was not on the site and that you should email me for it. That was wrong, and it was wrong when I wrote it. The report has been live here as a product since September. If you emailed in October and waited, that is on me.
I told you Cleveland’s final deadline was November 15, not the November 30 in the report. I still think that is right, and I cannot confirm it today, and neither can you from CIFF’s own site, which publishes no deadlines and says the 51st edition’s details arrive in mid-November. If you are submitting to Cleveland, read the FilmFreeway listing and trust it over both of us.
Last month’s WorldFest-Houston entry stopped at the December 15 Late tier. There is a Final tier after it, January 15, 2027, and it is missing from the report as well.
And Busan, above. Last month’s ledger said plainly that Busan closed on publish day and that its awards were not in the post. They are in this one.
Where the rest of this lives.
All of this comes out of the festival report, which reads the regulations at about a hundred festivals and works out the premiere rules, the fee ladders and the qualification claims one at a time. The free short version is here: what a hundred festival rulebooks actually say. The full 2026-27 edition is on the site, and this month’s list is the argument for it, which is that somebody has to read a hundred rulebooks so you do not find out in December what a tier costs.
If a deadline above has you pricing a print, do you actually need a DCP has the honest answer, which for a lot of films is no. And the filmmakers page says what we do and, more usefully, when the honest answer is that you do not need us yet.
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