Every festival deadline in October 2026
Updated: 1 day ago
First edition of the festival ledger. It covers October 2026 in full: every submission deadline that falls inside the month, every festival that runs 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 September 10, 2026, and where those two disagreed I have said which one I went with.
Seven things close in the first ten days.
This ledger publishes on the third Thursday and covers the following month, which gives an October 1 deadline about two weeks of notice. For an early-bird tier, two weeks is thin. So this block goes first.
October 1. SXSW, Final deadline. $125 for a feature, $90 for a short, for the 2027 festival, March 15 to 21 in Austin.
October 1. SIFF, Earlybird. For the 53rd, May 13 to 23, 2027, in Seattle.
October 1. ABFF, Early. $30 now, $75 at the January 24 final. Those are the only two tiers, so missing this one date costs two and a half times the fee. The 2027 edition moves from Miami to Los Angeles, May 20 to 23.
October 1. Clermont-Ferrand, National competition, for films completed in 2026. The International deadline was September 24. The festival runs January 29 to February 6, 2027.
October 1. Sidewalk opens for its 2027 edition, August 23 to 29 in Birmingham.
October 2. Big Sky, Late. For the 24th, February 12 to 21, 2027, in Missoula. Submit from FilmFreeway, and see the section below for why.
October 8. The Academy, final deadline, all three short categories, 5 p.m. Pacific, for the 99th Academy Awards. This is the second of two. Anything that qualified between October 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 was due August 13 and is already gone.
The rest of the month, by date.
October 15. Göteborg. For the 50th, January 29 to February 7, 2027.
October 15. Denton Black, Regular. The 2027 edition runs January 27 to 31 in person and January 31 to February 7 online. The Texas high-school lane is free at this tier and $15 at the November 4 extended deadline, so free ends on October 15.
October 15. The Academy, final deadline, Documentary Feature, 5 p.m. Pacific, for the 99th.
October 15. Thin Line, Earlybird. Denton, March 10 to 14, 2027. This one is not in the report and should be.
October 16. Guadalajara, shorts, 6 p.m. Central Mexico time, which is the same clock Texas is on. FICG 42 runs March 6 to 13, 2027.
October 29. Hot Docs, Early. Submissions open September 23. The 2027 festival is April 23 to May 2 in Toronto.
October 30. SAFILM, Earlybird. $35 for a film, $60 for a screenplay, for July 20 to 25, 2027 in San Antonio.
October 30. Santa Barbara, Late. The 42nd runs February 3 to 13, 2027. There is a final deadline on December 2 after this one, at a higher fee.
October 31. Guadalajara, features. Same edition as the shorts deadline above.
October 31. Panic Fest, Early Bird. April 1 to 11, 2027, Kansas City.
October 31. Sidewalk, Magic. A tier that exists for one month only and then closes.
Twenty-seven festivals run in October.
Dates and city, confirmed on each festival’s own page except where the line says otherwise.
Beyond Fest, September 23 to October 5, Los Angeles. Their own pages give three different ranges. The schedule page and the American Cinematheque agree on these dates, so these are the ones here.
Zurich, September 24 to October 4, Zurich.
New York Film Festival, September 25 to October 12, New York.
Mill Valley, October 1 to 11, Mill Valley, California.
Hamptons, October 2 to 12, East Hampton, New York.
Busan, October 6 to 15, Busan.
Screamfest, October 6 to 15, Los Angeles.
BendFilm, October 7 to 11, Bend, Oregon.
BFI London, October 7 to 18, London.
Film Fest Gent, October 7 to 18, Ghent.
Sitges, October 8 to 18, Sitges, Spain.
Heartland, October 8 to 18, Indianapolis.
Warsaw, October 9 to 18, Warsaw. wff.pl will not load, so this one is from the festival’s FilmFreeway listing and Cinematography World.
Chicago International, October 14 to 25, Chicago.
Urbanworld, October 14 to 18, New York. Their November 2025 announcement said November 4 to 8. That has been superseded.
Woodstock, October 14 to 18, Woodstock, New York.
Middleburg, October 15 to 18, Middleburg, Virginia.
Brooklyn Horror, October 15 to 22, Brooklyn.
Newport Beach, October 15 to 22, Newport Beach, California.
NewFest, October 15 to 25, New York.
Montclair, October 16 to 25, Montclair, New Jersey.
AFI Fest, October 21 to 25, Los Angeles.
New Orleans, October 22 to 27 in person, online through November 1.
Denver, October 22 to November 1, Denver.
SCAD Savannah, October 24 to 31, Savannah.
Tokyo, October 26 to November 4, Tokyo.
Austin Film Festival, October 29 to November 5, Austin.
What moved since the report.
Busan is an A-list festival now, and there is money attached. The Korea Herald reported on September 1 that this is the first edition since the International Federation of Film Producers Associations named Busan one of its 17 A-list festivals, and that the Busan Award for best film now qualifies a film for the Academy’s international feature category. The Academy added that route in the 99th rules it approved on May 1. Busan charges no entry fee and asks for premiere priority rather than premiere exclusivity, which makes it the cheapest qualifying route on the board for an eligible feature.
Woodstock is losing the person who built it. Chronogram reported on September 9 that Meira Blaustein, cofounder, executive director and head programmer for 26 years, leaves at the end of 2026.
One festival did not come back. This Is Reno reported on August 12 that the board of the Cordillera International Film Festival cancelled the 2026 edition, which would have been its ninth, after a community letter alleging financial irregularities.
Venice closed on September 12. The Golden Lion went to Woman Unknown, directed by May el-Toukhy, per Variety.
August results, for the record. The Golden Leopard at Locarno to You Don’t Belong Here, directed by Florin Șerban, per Variety. The Heart of Sarajevo for best feature to Everytime, Sandra Wollner, per Screen Daily. Edinburgh’s Sean Connery Prize to Skintown, Kieron J. Walsh, per Northern Ireland Screen. Melbourne’s Bright Horizons Award to La Gradiva, Marine Atlan, per Variety Australia. The HollyShorts grand prize, which carries Academy qualification, to Vultures, Dian Weys. Sidewalk’s Founders Award for best narrative feature to Sender, Russell Goldman.
Two from here. CultureMap Austin reported on August 19 that Fantastic Fest titles now feed into Alamo Drafthouse’s new Alamo Exclusives distribution line, which is the first time an Austin festival has had a theatrical distribution pipeline attached to it. And Austin Film Festival has announced a first wave of eleven films and its 2026 honorees, Brad Bird, Andrew Haigh and Aleshea Harris, per Tribeza on August 27. Disclosure: I run theater operations for Austin Film Festival.
The thing a calendar cannot tell you.
Three festivals in this month’s research have a submissions page that will actively mislead you. None of the three is down. All three are just old.
Big Sky’s submissions page today says 2026 submissions are closed, for the 19th annual festival, in February 2022, with 2021 deadlines printed under it. The live FilmFreeway listing says the late deadline is October 2, 2026. Both pages belong to the same festival. A filmmaker who lands on the festival’s own site and takes it at face value does not submit at all.
SIFF prints a deadline of January 7, 2026, a date that has already happened. FilmFreeway says January 7, 2027. Berlinale’s film-entry pages still describe the 76th, and one of them still says online submission for the 2025 Berlinale will be activated in mid-September. That is why there is no Berlinale line above. The report carries October 21 for features and November 4 for shorts, and neither is on berlinale.de. Both sit exactly one day earlier than the 76th cycle’s published dates, which is what an extrapolation looks like from the outside.
The rule that comes out of this is not complicated. When a festival’s own page and its FilmFreeway listing disagree, the listing is usually the newer one, because it is the page the festival has to keep current in order to keep taking money. Read both. If only one of them will tell you a date, that is a reason to email the festival, not a reason to pay.
Corrections.
This is the first edition, so there is nothing of my own to correct yet. The re-verification turned up six corrections to the report this ledger is built on instead.
The report says the 99th Academy Awards ceremony date could not be verified and should not be published. It can be. The Academy and ABC announced Sunday, March 14, 2027, in a release dated April 7, 2026.
The report lists Full Frame as a festival whose next edition could not be confirmed. Full Frame’s own call for entries puts the 28th at April 1 to 4, 2027, in Durham, and still calls it Academy qualifying.
The report lists Thin Line the same way. Thin Line is running, it is 20 years old, its 2027 edition is March 10 to 14 in Denton, and its earlybird deadline is October 15, which is why it is in the list above.
Berlinale’s October 21 and November 4 deadlines are in the report and are not sourced to Berlinale. Treat them as an estimate until the festival publishes.
Annecy’s October date is a submissions opening, not a deadline, so it is out of the deadline list.
Melbourne’s expected mid-October opening has no source behind it at all, so it is out too.
Where the rest of this lives.
All of the above comes out of the festival report. It reads the actual 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 of what that research found is here: what a hundred festival rulebooks actually say. The full report runs to 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 you are shooting here rather than submitting, the production ledger is the other half of this. And if you are working out whether any of it applies to you yet, the filmmakers page says what we do and, more usefully, when the honest answer is that you do not need us.
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