XPRIZE will fund your sci-fi feature with $2.5 million, and the deadline is this Saturday
A three minute trailer and a twelve page treatment could win $2.5 million in production funding, $100,000 in cash and a feature deal supported by Google and Range Media. Submissions close 15 August.
XPRIZE is offering the largest prize an AI filmmaker can currently win: $2.5 million in production funding, $100,000 in cash, and a commitment from Range Media Partners to develop your three minute trailer into a feature film with a budget of up to $15 million. The deadline is 15 August 2026. If you have been sitting on a sci-fi concept, you have two days.
The Future Vision XPRIZE is a $3.5 million competition run by the XPRIZE Foundation with Google and Range Media Partners through their 100 Zeros initiative. The brief is specific: a hopeful, technology-enabled vision of the future. The organisers are explicit that they want conflict and stakes in the storytelling, but the resolution has to point toward a future worth building. Dystopias, rogue AI and collapse narratives are the one thing the judges have said they do not want.
What you submit
Your entry is a video up to three minutes long, either a trailer or a short film, plus a fifteen second sponsor trailer using assets the competition provides. Alongside the video you submit a treatment of up to twelve pages with a one page cover sheet carrying a logline, a synopsis and a personal statement. Any production approach qualifies: live action, animation, fully AI-generated work or a hybrid. Google is the creative technology partner and is openly promoting Flow and Veo for entries, but no specific tools are required.
Submissions go through YouTube. Your video must carry the hashtag #FutureVisionXPRIZE in the title or description, include the sponsor end card, and link the competition site in the description. Every qualifying entry is added to the official curated playlist, which means your work is publicly visible from the moment you enter.
The prize structure
The grand prize is $2.5 million toward production of your film plus $100,000 in cash. Four additional finalists each receive $100,000, and the competition lists a further $500,000 in prizes still to be announced. Finalists present their work live at the Moonshot Gathering in Los Angeles on 25 September 2026, with travel, hotel and access covered, and the winner is announced on the night.
The judging panel is unusually senior for a film competition: Astro Teller, who runs Google X, Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, Rod Roddenberry of the Roddenberry Foundation, and XPRIZE chief executive Anousheh Ansari.
Read before you enter
Two things in the official rules are worth understanding clearly. The $2.5 million is structured as an equity investment toward production of the film, not a cash award, so the money arrives as financing for the project with Range attached as producers. And the sponsor trailer is mandatory: entrants agree to update it if new sponsors join during the competition. You keep ownership of your YouTube channel and your underlying work.
Entry is free and the competition is open worldwide. The full requirements are on the rules page, and submissions go through the official site, which is running a live countdown to the exact cutoff.
Source: Future Vision XPRIZE official site, XPRIZE announcement, Google's 100 Zeros post.