Screenwriting competitions directory · 2026
Screenwriting grants and development funds.
Grants and development funds put money behind a script rather than a prize behind a competition. Most come from national screen agencies and are tied to where you live or where the film will be made.
Read the repayment terms before calling any of them free money. Several are repayable if the project goes into production, and the listings say which.
11 entries, soonest deadline first, then anything currently open, then everything between cycles.
Ffilm Cymru Wales Development Fund
Grant · 2026
2 Oct 2026
Up to 24,999 pounds to develop a feature, and a lone writer can apply. Recoupable, with a 50 per cent premium in places.
Feature
Checked 30 days ago
Screen Ireland Screenplay Development (Established Talent)
Grant · 2026
30 Oct 2026
Attach a producer and you are automatically ineligible. Up to 20,000 euro, and it is a repayable loan.
Feature
Checked 30 days ago
BFI NETWORK England Early Development Fund
Grant · 2026
Closed for this cycle
The last round closed at 11am on 18 November 2025 and no new window has been published. The evidenced pattern is an autumn opening with a deadline at 11am on a Tuesday in mid-to-late November: 18 November 2025 and 19 November 2024, with the 2024 round being promoted from October. Rounds before 2024 could not be evidenced from a primary source, so treat this as a two-year observation rather than a rule. Expect a November deadline, with no date announced yet.
National Lottery money paid straight to the writer, with no producer needed and no copyright share taken.
Feature
Checked 30 days ago
Dublin International Film Festival ESB Short Film Award
Grant · 2027
Closed for this cycle
The call opened on 19 May 2026 and closed at 17:30 on 31 July 2026, extended from an original date of 21 July. IMPORTANT: this is a one-off anniversary award, not an annual competition. It was launched to mark ESB's centenary and the festival's 25th anniversary, there is no prior cycle of any kind, and an archive search returns no earlier captures of the page. Do not expect a next window: if it recurs at all, that will be new information. Two errors on their own pages are worth knowing: the website gives the premiere as February 2026 while the guidelines correctly say February 2027, and the award appears under three different official names across the page, the guidelines PDF and the required email subject line.
Eighteen thousand euro to make your short, and a premiere at DIFF. A one-off anniversary award, not an annual.
Short
Checked 30 days ago
Hubert Bals Fund: Script and Project Development Support
Grant · 2026
Closed for this cycle
The 2026 round closed on 2 April 2026 at 5pm Central European time and 20 projects were announced in August. IFFR states that the 2027 deadline will be announced towards the end of 2026. The fund runs a single annual round; deadline dates for rounds before 2026 are not published.
Ten thousand euro to develop a feature, if you originate from one of its eligible countries.
Feature
Checked 30 days ago
NZ Writers Guild Seed and Seed Advanced Grants
Grant · 2026
Opens soon
Round 1 2026 closed on 4 September 2026 at 11:59am NZST (a morning deadline), with recipients announced on 30 October. NZWG's page currently lists only Round 1; in August it gave Round 2 as opening on 18 December 2026 and closing on 12 February 2027, so treat those dates as indicative until they are relisted. Seed offers four grants of NZ$12,500 and Seed Advanced two of NZ$15,500 per round.
Cash to write a feature draft before you part with any rights. New Zealand citizens and residents only.
Feature
Checked 2 days ago
Screen Australia Narrative Content Development
Grant · 2026
Rolling applications
Always open. Applications can be made at any time through Screen Australia's portal, with assessment taking approximately eight weeks from the point eligibility is confirmed. There are no rounds and no deadlines to plan around. The guidelines were issued on 1 July 2025 and updated on 2 July 2026, so the stable pattern here is annual guideline revision rather than an annual application window.
Always open, no fee, and a lone writer can apply. But it is repayable if the project goes into production.
FeatureTV Pilot
Checked 30 days ago
Screen Scotland Single Project Development Funding
Grant · 2026
Rolling applications
Open all year with no deadlines. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and decisions take up to six weeks from receipt of a completed form.
Rolling, no deadline, no fee: 3,000 to 50,000 pounds against a real development budget. Repayable if the film gets made.
Feature
Checked 30 days ago
SFFILM Rainin Grant
Grant · 2026
Closed for this cycle
The 2026 cycle is closed and no 2027 dates have been published. That cycle opened on 10 February 2026 with a regular deadline of 8 May at a 30 dollar fee and a final deadline of 22 May at 50 dollars. The fee is waived for SFFILM members, though the cheapest membership is 100 dollars a year. Submitting early confers no competitive advantage, and one fee covers a single application across several SFFILM narrative grants.
Up to 25,000 dollars for a social-justice feature, but four unfunded weeks in San Francisco come out of it.
Feature
Checked 29 days ago
Slick Films Fund
Grant · 2026
Closed for this cycle
The 2026 cycle is complete and no 2027 round has been announced anywhere. That cycle opened on 7 September 2025 and ran through six tiers to an extended deadline of 8 April 2026, with fees from 30 pounds at the lightning tier to 45 at extended for the main fund, and 25 to 35 for the First Time Filmmaker fund. Note the rules and the dates panel disagree on the final date, giving 5 April and 8 April respectively, with the only published time, 23:59 GMT, attached to the 5 April date. Nominees were notified on 6 July and the winner announced at the pitch event on 2 October 2026. The fund has run three years, so a further round is plausible but entirely unconfirmed.
Ten thousand pounds to make your short, decided by a live pitch, with travel paid and an Oscar-winning jury.
Short
Checked 29 days ago
Through Her Lens: The Tribeca CHANEL Women's Filmmaker Program
Grant · 2026
Closed for this cycle
The 2026 application window ran from 11:00am Eastern on 19 May 2026 to 11:59pm Eastern on 21 June 2026, with judging through to the end of August and notification in autumn 2026. Workshop dates for this cycle have not been published. This is the only entry in its group that publishes exact times and a timezone. The workshop shape is stable, at three days in New York in mid-to-late September with five finalists, but two things make the calendar unreliable: no cycle ran at all in 2023, and application windows for the 2024 and 2025 editions were never published, only their workshop dates.
A hundred and twenty thousand dollars to produce your short. Free to enter, but you need a director and producer attached.
Short
Checked 30 days ago
We are not affiliated with the competitions and programmes listed here, and nobody pays to appear. Verdicts are our editorial opinion, formed from public information on the date shown. Deadlines, fees and eligibility change, so confirm the details on the organisation's own site before you submit or pay anything. More in our Terms.
Questions writers ask about screenwriting grants and development funds
How many screenwriting grants and development funds are listed?
11 at the last count. Each one is checked against the organiser's own site and carries the date it was last verified; the newest stamp is 6 September 2026. Entries are added in verified batches, and anything that goes dormant is unpublished rather than left to mislead.
Which screenwriting grants and development funds are open right now?
2 of the 11 are open for applications or carry a dated deadline ahead, and 1 more are marked as opening soon. The page regenerates every hour from the directory, so the counts move as deadlines pass and windows open.
Are screenwriting grants and development funds free to enter?
10 of the 11 charge no entry fee at any deadline and nothing if you are selected. The rest charge at some point, and every listing shows the fee at each deadline. The free to enter page gathers the free ones across the whole directory.
Plan the season rather than reacting to it. The deadline calendar shows what closes next across the whole directory, the cost of entry shows how fees climb at late deadlines, and the free Contest Fit-Finder narrows the list to your script in five questions. Or go back to the full directory.