Script Pipeline TV Writing Contest

5 Oct 2026

Closed for this cycle

The 2026 contest closed with the final deadline on 28 August (early 29 May at 59 US dollars, regular 14 July at 69, final 79). Quarter-finalists are announced on 6 October, semi-finalists on 13 November, and the finalists and winners on 9 December 2026. Shore's page lists 1 April as the opening date, so expect the 2027 contest to open around then.

30 Sept 2026

Closed for this cycle

No deadline is published and the next cycle is unannounced. CFC's own applications page lists the lab with an empty deadline field, and the programme page carries no application link. There is no pattern to extrapolate from: this has run exactly once. Applications for the inaugural cycle opened in June 2025, the cohort was announced on 19 January 2026, and the lab ran 19 January to 5 June 2026 with Jezabel Bamberg, Sandi Rankaduwa, Isabella Shibuta and Yemie Sonuga. Note that the announced schedule already moved once: launch materials said the lab would run October 2025 to March 2026, and it did not. Treat any forward-looking date here with suspicion.

Closed for this cycle

The 2026 cycle opened in January and closed on 26 February 2026 at 3:00pm EST, with a 100 Canadian dollar application fee plus HST payable via Stripe; the HST-inclusive total is not published. The residency itself runs from 13 July to early December 2026. The 2027 window is unannounced, but this is the most reliably annual programme of its kind in Canada: three consecutive cycles are evidenced with 19 participants each, running 15 July to 13 December 2024, 14 July to 12 December 2025, and from 13 July 2026, with five writers in the Writers' Lab every year. On that record a call opening in January with a late-February deadline is a reasonable expectation, though CFC has not published one.

Closed for this cycle

The last published cycle opened on 28 May 2025 and closed at 18:00 on 25 June 2025, and no window for the next cycle has been published anywhere. Be careful projecting from that: the window moved by roughly three and a half months between cycles, from 6 February to 1 March in 2024 to late May and June in 2025, and the programme year moved with it. Only two cycles are evidenced and they disagree, so there is no stable pattern. The careers page has been unchanged since at least January 2026 and still fronts the closed 2025/26 cycle, so watch Channel 4's talent schemes index rather than this page.