Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Sat Jan 4th - Sat Feb 8th

Worldbuilding Awards 2025

Take your place among the BEST of World Anvil
The Worldbuilding Awards is our annual contest to spotlight the best worldbuilding of the year! This is your chance to spotlight your hard work to the world and to get inspired by the amazing worldbuilding that other worldbuilders have created. Submit your worldbuilding between January 4th and February 8th, 2025 and keep reading to learn how to win!  

Current phase: pre-entry

Until January 4th...
  • Read below and decide which of your work is eligible for which category
  • Polish up your prospective entries (words and layout) to a shine!
  • Join the discussion. Use #WAWA25 on social media!
 

Detailed information

Rules

  1. You can submit to any number of categories, but you can only submit one entry per category.
  2. Work that has been nominated or won non-major categories in past Worldbuilding Awards/Best of World Anvil competitions (from 2020 onwards) may not be submitted.
  3. Work that has won a major category in past Worldbuilding Awards/Best of World Anvil competitions (from 2020 onwards) may not be submitted.
  4. Entries to the Awards may only be submitted to one category.
  5. You may not edit your entries while they are being judged: entries that don't go to the second voting round can be edited after March 8th. Entries in the second round may not be edited until the end of the voting round on March 22th.
    • For full world submissions, this rule applies to the world homepage, meta, and primer/introduction article (if any), as well as the world CSS theme.
  6. All submitted works must be public (not private) and published (not draft). You may not set entries as private or draft while they are being voted on.
  7. All art used must be clearly labelled with the artist's name, e.g. beneath the image, in the author's notes, footer, global footer, or similar. If you are the artist, you must credit yourself. You must have explicit permission and rights of the original artist to use their work.
  8. Duplicate votes (i.e. multiple votes submitted by the same person) will be removed.
  9. The World Anvil Team reserves the right to disqualify entries deemed to be problematic regardless of the vote results. Please take a look at the Etiquette policy to learn what's considered problematic content on World Anvil.
  10. Similarly, World Anvil retains the right to arbitrate and/or change the rules where necessary to uphold the spirit and integrity of this event and the community. We will communicate changes as necessary.
  11. As always, World Anvil claims no ownership over your original work.

Categories

These are the available categories for the Worldbuilding Awards 2025!   N.B. Please do not write to us asking if the topic of your article fits the topic of the award! It is up to you to make this judgement call, based on the description and the eligible article templates.   Article Categories (click to expand)
Note: In the submission form, you will be asked to explain with a short sentence why your entry fits the category. Each article category has a non-exhaustive list of examples. You can submit articles of any template in any category as long as they fit the topic.

Heart & Minds Award 2025: An article touching on intellectual, sociological, spiritual, or cultural accomplishments and traditions of a people in your world.
Examples: a cultural group, a subculture, a coming-of-age celebration.
Rise of Nations Award 2025: An article relevant to the history of civilizations and peoples of your world and their legacies.
Examples: an important historical figure, an old settlement, a relic or ruin, a museum or archive.
Wondrous Nature Award 2025: Your natural world in all its glory; an article describing anything from species to locations, to natural and supernatural events, and bizarre naturally-occurring materials.
Examples: A floating archipelago, a walking plant, weather phenomena, mineral resources.
Strength & Honor Award 2025: An article relevant to the interactions of the people of your world; diplomacy, war, trade and collaboration, and the people who drive and engineer them.
Examples: a peace treaty, a famous trader, a battle, a technology used in war.
Pillars of Progress Award 2025: An article describing a technological or scientific (including metaphysical) accomplishment, or celebrating creations developed by the people of your world.
Examples: A new technology or spell, a place famous for technological or magical progress, a famous scientist or scholar.
Myths & Legends Award 2025: An article describing an aspect of your worldbuilding that's mythical or fictional within the construct of your world, even if it's based on true events.
Examples: A legendary hero, an order of legendary knights, a creation myth, an urban legend.
  Non-article categories (click to expand)
Time and Space Award 2025: This award is for the best Chronicle created on World Anvil.
Minimum content requirement: 20 events and 1 map
History Award 2025: This award is for the best Timeline created on World Anvil.
Minimum content requirement: 20 events and use the new timeline format introduced this year.
Cartography Award 2025: This award is for the best Interactive Map created on World Anvil.
  • All map-types can be submitted—there is no stipulation of image-type (dungeon maps, battle maps, region maps etc).
  • Minimum interactive requirements are 30 pins, each with a title and description of around 120 characters, 2 marker groups, and no less than 50 words of description for the map itself.
  • You must either own full rights to the map outright, or have the artist's permission, to submit any map illustration you have not made yourself.
Artist's Cartography Award 2025: This award is for the best Interactive Map drawn manually or digitally by you (or your team). This category excludes AI-generated images, external commissions, or pre-made assets and stamps (such as Inkarnate, Wonderdraft, etc).
Interactive requirements: same as the Cartography Award above.
  Major Categories (click to expand)
Best Worldbuilding Article 2025: For the best article on World Anvil overall; articles submitted here can be about any topic.
Most Beautiful World 2025: For worlds that deserve their own spot in an art gallery.
  • All CSS, layout, and other visual elements must be created by you (or your team). External CSS commissions are not allowed in this category.
  • Artwork does not have to be created by you (you can use commissioned art, stock images, etc.)
Artist's Most Beautiful World 2025: This is for worldbuilders who create their own original art as part of their worldbuilding.
  • All artwork must be created manually or digitally by you or your team.
  • Original art must be prominently featured on your world.
  • AI-generated images aren't allowed; commissioned art and stock images are only allowed sparingly.
Best World 2025: Best overall world, considering both its content and design. There are no topic or format limitations
Best Newcomer: Awarded to the best world created by a user who joined World Anvil on January 1st, 2024 or later.

Voting and judging process

The winners of the Awards will be selected based on a vote open to the public, including people without a World Anvil account. This is the full schedule of the event:

Submission phase: January 4th-February 8th
Use this time to submit your entries using a form that will be shared when the event begins. Only submit the form once; duplicate answers will be automatically removed.

First voting round: February 15th-March 1st
Votes can be cast by any person using a widget added to the entry itself. The top 5 winners of each category will form a shortlist of nominees.

Second voting round: March 8th-March 22nd
Only the shortlisted entries will be available for voting in the second round. This vote will happen on a form.

Awards Ceremony: April 5th
The winners of the Awards will be announced in the Awards Ceremony on April 5th.

Prizes

The following digital prizes will be awarded:
  • Participation badge: awarded to all submitters.
  • Nominee rosette: for shortlisted works.
  • Winner rosette: for the winner of each category.
Additionally, winners will also get: Please note that these prizes require significant time to prepare, so delivery might take some time!

FAQ

Can I submit NSFW content?
NSFW entries will not be elegible for these Awards. This includes sexual themes or erotica, and depictions of extreme violence or gore.

How do I submit an entry?
Use the form that will be published when the event starts in January 4th, 2025, and only submit your entries once; duplicates will be removed. Entries must be submitted with their ID code, as well as their view link. The form itself contains instructions with screenshots to get the ID for each type of entry.

Where can I check if I've won or been nominated in previous years?
The Worldbuilding Awards Showcase has the list of all winners, and you can find all nominees here.

How are my creator rights affected by these Awards?
By entering the Worldbuilding Awards, you allow World Anvil to use your content for promotional purposes. However, your creator rights are in no way affected by this and you can revoke this permission at any time with reasonable notice. Check our copyright page for more information about how we handle copyright on World Anvil.

Why can't past winners (or nominees) submit the same entries again?
We started the Worldbuilding Awards to celebrate the amazing creativity of our community. This restriction is intended to make sure that more people have a chance of winning, rather than the same names each year. Of course, past winners can still submit content that hasn't been previously nominated and, for major categories, you can even re-submit past nominations! (see rules 2 and 3).

What's different from last year?
If you took part last year, here are the main changes we've made to the Awards:
  • After hearing your feedback, the article categories are no longer limited to some article templates only. You can now submit any type of article as long as it fits the category's topic.
  • We've introduced two new categories (Artist's Cartography Award and Artist's Most Beautiful World) to give a space for artists who create original art for their worldbuilding and celebrate their creativity.
  • The winners of all major categories will now win a cash prize (in addition to other prizes). The inclusion of a cash prize this year is not a guarantee this will be continued in future years.

I have a question not answered in this page. Where can I ask?
You can email us at [email protected].
 

Be the first to submit an entry!

Write an article following the description and the rules below and submit it!
Win prizes and some very awesome badges for your profile!