Every festival deadline in November 2026.

Second edition of the festival ledger. It covers November 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. It is not a reprint. Every date below was checked against the festival’s own page or its live FilmFreeway listing on October 10 and rechecked on October 15, 2026, and where the two disagreed I have said which one I went with.

Nine things close in the first ten days.

A third-Thursday ledger gives a November 1 deadline about two weeks of notice. For an early-bird tier that is thin, so this block goes first.

November 1. Palm Springs ShortFest, Earlybird. $50, going to $60 at the December 31 regular and $70 at the February 7 late. For June 22 to 28, 2027. Their own submissions page still describes the 2026 festival, so this is the FilmFreeway listing.

November 2. Visions du Réel, Early deadline. CHF 25 for a short and CHF 35 for a feature. There are only two tiers, and the other is the December 15 final at CHF 40 and CHF 50. The 58th runs April 9 to 18, 2027, in Nyon.

November 2. Miami, Regular. $75 across most categories. The 44th runs April 1 to 11, 2027.

November 2. Milwaukee, Earlybird. $60 for a feature and $35 for a short, and free for any filmmaker who lives in Wisconsin or has screened at the festival before. MFF27 runs April 29 to May 13, 2027. Their call-for-entries page no longer resolves, so this is the FilmFreeway listing.

November 3. CPH:DOX, for films completed after September 1. This is not a fee tier. A film finished before September 1 had its own deadline on that date and it is gone. CPH:FORUM applications close the same day. 300 DKK over 50 minutes, 150 under. The 2027 festival is March 10 to 21 in Copenhagen.

November 4. Berlinale, short films. €75, and one fee covers every section. The 77th runs February 10 to 21, 2027. This date was an estimate last month and is now published. See the corrections.

November 4. The Academy, Music (Original Score), for the 99th Academy Awards.

November 6. Provincetown, Early. $65 for a feature and $45 for a short. The 29th runs June 9 to 13, 2027. Their own site is serving last cycle’s ladder, including a deadline that closed in November 2025, so this is the FilmFreeway listing.

November 6. Florida, Regular. $70 for a feature and $50 for a short, for April 9 to 18, 2027, in Orlando.

The rest of the month, by date.

November 11. SFFILM, Regular for everything and the last call for shorts. One row doing two jobs. A feature can still enter at the December 2 final. A short cannot, because there is no later tier for shorts. The 2027 festival is April 22 to May 2 in San Francisco.

November 12. The Academy, final deadline, General Entry, Animated Feature, Best Picture and the RAISE form, for the 99th. The first deadline for those categories was September 17 and has passed.

November 13. Aspen Shortsfest, Late, and this is the last tier there is. $95. April 6 to 10, 2027.

November 15. WorldFest-Houston, Main. The 60th runs April 30 to May 8, 2027. Late is December 15 and final is January 15.

November 15. Waco Independent, Regular. $65 for a feature, $40 for a short, $35 for a student short. Year 11 runs July 15 to 18, 2027.

November 15. Flickers’ RIIFF, Earlybird. $50, or $35 for students, on a ladder that ends at $100. August 3 to 8, 2027, in Providence.

November 15. Cleveland, Final. $100 for a feature and $80 for a short. CIFF51 is in spring 2027 and has not published dates. This is two weeks earlier than the report says, and see the corrections.

November 18. Tribeca, official deadline, features. The 26th runs June 3 to 12, 2027. Early closed October 21 and extended is December 16. Shorts and music videos run on their own ladder, October 28, December 2 and February 3. None of this is in the report.

November 20. Frameline, Early Bird. $35, on a ladder that ends at $100 on March 1. That is the steepest escalation on this month’s board. Frameline51 runs June 16 to 26, 2027.

November 20. Florida, Late. $90 for a feature and $70 for a short. Same edition as the November 6 line.

November 27. Overlook, Regular. They call every tier an Un-Deadline. $90 for a feature, $75 for a short, $55 for a Louisiana short. April 15 to 18, 2027, in New Orleans.

November 30. Sidewalk, Early Bird. $40 for a feature and $30 for a short, for August 23 to 29, 2027, in Birmingham.

November, no day published. Heartland opens its 2027 cycle. Their own page says November and stops there. Indy Shorts, which is the Academy-qualifying event from the same organisation, is open now and closes April 4, 2027.

Twelve festivals and two markets run at least partly in November.

Dates and city, confirmed on each festival’s own page unless the line says otherwise.

Austin Film Festival, through November 5, Austin. The 33rd opened October 29. Disclosure: I run theater operations for this festival.

Denver, through November 1, Denver. The 49th opened October 22.

Tokyo, through November 4, Tokyo. The 39th opened October 26.

Lone Star, opens November 4, Fort Worth. The 20th. The end date is contested: the festival’s FilmFreeway listing says November 11, its own press release says November 13, and its website does not publish a range at all. The gala is November 13.

Indie Memphis, November 5 to 8, Memphis, with encores on the 9th and 10th. The 28th.

Mar del Plata, November 5 to 15, Mar del Plata, Argentina. The 41st.

Thessaloniki, November 5 to 15, Thessaloniki. The 67th. Those are the same dates as Mar del Plata and it is not a transcription error.

Tallinn Black Nights, November 6 to 22, Tallinn and Tartu. PÖFF 30, with competition screenings November 13 to 19.

ToruńCAMERIMAGE, November 7 to 14, Toruń, Poland. The 34th. Not in the report and should be.

American Film Market, November 10 to 15, Los Angeles. The 47th, at the Fairmont Century Plaza.

DOC NYC, November 11 to 29, New York. The 17th, in theaters through November 19 and online to the 29th.

IDFA, November 12 to 22, Amsterdam. The 39th.

Marrakech, November 20 to 28, Marrakech. The 23rd.

Ventana Sur, November 30 to December 4, Montevideo.

What moved since the report.

One festival pulled its year. The National reported on September 21 that the Red Sea Film Foundation cancelled the 6th Red Sea International Film Festival, set for December 3 to 12 in Jeddah, and will return in late 2027. The Souk goes with it; the Fund and the Labs keep running.

One drew a line on AI. St. Louis Public Radio reported on September 8 that Cinema St. Louis will no longer screen films made with generative AI, across its festival and its filmmakers showcase, starting with the 2027 editions. Other kinds stay eligible. Their curation and education director, Emmett Williams, put the border where you would expect: changing a shirt’s color is allowed, creating the shirt out of nothing is not.

Texas. The Austin Chronicle reported on September 22 that Austin Film Society has launched Texas Lights, invitation-only grants of $50,000 and up for features by mid-career Texas filmmakers who have held an AFS Grant before, run jointly with Fort Worth’s Lone Star Film Society and the Round Top Film Festival. First recipients are Margaret Brown, Annie Silverstein with Monique Walton, and Diffan Sina Norman.

Results since the last ledger. TIFF’s People’s Choice to La Bola Negra, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, per IndieWire, September 20. San Sebastián’s Golden Shell to Tender Loving Care, Mike Leigh, per The Film Verdict, September 26. Fantastic Fest’s main competition to Girl in the Night, Luka Marčetić, per No Film School, September 23, and its Fantastic Pitches prize to Father Figure, Connor Martin, carrying $100,000 in financing from Chroma. Busan’s 31st edition closes on the day this publishes, so its top awards are not in here.

Next month’s lineups are mostly out. IDFA announced its full selection on October 13: 253 titles from 80 countries, opening with White Tiger Column. Tallinn’s official competition is 12 films and all 12 are world premieres. DOC NYC’s main slate runs past 115 features. Mar del Plata is the gap: its lineups land at a gala on October 19, four days after this goes out.

The tier name is not the deadline.

November is the month to stop budgeting by tier name. Three of the dates above sit under a different label than the report gives them, and the label is the part that moves. Provincetown’s November 6 is its Early deadline, not its Regular, which is December 11. WorldFest-Houston’s November 15 is its Main deadline, and its Late is a month later. Aspen’s November 13 is called Late and is in fact the last tier it has.

Then there is what the words are doing. Overlook calls every tier an Un-Deadline. Waco’s fourth tier is Don’t be Late, Milwaukee’s last one is Last Call, and Sidewalk runs a Magic Deadline. SFFILM’s November 11 is a single row that is simultaneously the regular deadline for every category and the final deadline for shorts, so a feature director who reads it as the shorts date misses their own regular rate.

The rule that falls out is the dull one. Build the calendar on dates and read the fee next to each date. A tier called Late can be the last one or the middle one, and no two festivals use the same words. Cleveland is what the mistake costs: its final deadline is November 15, the report says November 30, and a feature arriving between those dates pays $125 instead of $100.

Corrections.

Two to last month’s ledger, and the first one has a deadline attached.

I wrote that Berlinale’s October 21 and November 4 dates were in the report, were not sourced to Berlinale, and should be treated as an estimate. Berlinale has now published both, and both are exactly what the report said. Features close October 21, 2026, shorts close November 4, and the fee is €175 and €75. If you read that line last month and shelved a feature, the deadline is six days from today.

The October list left out Houston Cinema Arts, which ran October 1 to 11. It should have read twenty-eight festivals, not twenty-seven. It was missing because the report files Houston Cinema Arts as a November festival, which this year it was not. The report also says that festival takes no submissions, which is wrong too: its Houston Stories program is an open call for Houston shorts at $10.

Four more in the report, found this month. Dallas International’s Fall deadline is September 22, not November 13, so it has closed and the next DIFF deadline is Regular on January 15, 2027. Cleveland’s final is November 15, not November 30. Provincetown’s November 6 is Early, not Regular. WorldFest-Houston’s November 15 is Main, not Late.

One open question in the report is now answered. Dallas International publishes its Texas Feature test, and it is production, not residency: a film qualifies if production or post-production happened in Texas, and post alone is enough. That lane is flat at $60 across all four tiers, against $75 to $125 for the open categories.

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 short version is here: what a hundred festival rulebooks actually say. The full report is about 46,000 words and is not on the site yet. If it would be useful, write to info@goldsmithpictures.com and I will send it.

If a deadline above has you pricing a print, what a DCP costs has the published rates. And the filmmakers page says what we do and, more usefully, when the honest answer is that you do not need us yet.