The music video awards calendar, and the one deadline still open
The 2026 rounds at the UK Music Video Awards, the Young Director Award and Camerimage have all closed. For a video finished this year, the next entry window opens in November.
Awards are one of the few routes where an unknown name can end up on the same list as a well-funded one. The catch is that entry windows are short and mostly already shut for 2026. Checked 10 September 2026.
Closed for 2026
UK Music Video Awards. Final entry deadline was 6 August 2026 at 23:59 UK time. Entry cost £120 plus VAT per video, per category, with the exception of Best Low Budget Video or Visualiser at £80. Fees are not refundable. Eligible work had to be completed and delivered between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2026. The ceremony is at the Roundhouse in London on 4 November 2026. The newcomer categories are the ones worth watching: Best New Director, and newcomer awards for cinematography, colour grading and editing.
Young Director Award. The 2026 cycle closed on 15 May after extensions. Single entry ran €230 early, €280 standard, €330 late, with cheaper tiers for Supershort, First Feature, Film School and DreamPitch, and 20 per cent off for five or more entries in one order. No 2027 dates or fees are published yet.
EnergaCAMERIMAGE Music Videos Competition. Entry is free of charge, which makes it the best value on this page, and the 2026 deadline was 31 July. Selections are announced by 5 October 2026, the festival runs in Toruń from 7 to 14 November, and the prize is a Golden Frog for cinematography plus a special mention for directing. Eligibility: completed after 1 January 2025, under 15 minutes, no fully animated videos, no resubmissions.
Open next
Berlin Music Video Awards. The 2027 submission window accepts videos published between 1 January 2026 and 7 March 2027, or not yet published. Its early bird deadline falls around 15 November 2026, making it the next entry date on the calendar for anything finished this year. Final nominations are announced 7 April 2027. Videos must be under eight minutes, and the site states that "anyone can participate. Budget, label and names are not a determining factor".
Two things we could not confirm
The Berlin 2027 entry fee is not published on the festival's own site, and its submission platform blocked us, so we are not quoting the figure that appears on third-party festival listings. Separately, an old submissions page on that site still shows 2020 and 2021 deadlines; ignore it. The UK Music Video Awards site gives two slightly different eligibility windows for the low budget category on different pages, and the discrepancy is theirs.
Source
www.ukmva.comA number here out of date? Tell us and we will re-check it against the source.
