Snow has settled, the lights are lit, and the world has shifted into something magical. We’re calling on creators to celebrate winter in all its forms, from mythic legends and living machines to whimsical holiday fantasy. This Winter Festival is about wonder, power, craft, and imagination, not just snowflakes and scarves.
Whether you’re forging machines in frozen halls, telling ancient Nordic sagas, or building tiny worlds sealed in glass, this festival is your invitation to make winter unforgettable. ✨
➡️ Enter Here
📜 Submission Guidelines
For the Winter Festival, we’re looking for images and videos that fully embrace winter fantasy, magic, and creativity. Submissions must be SFW (PG/PG13) and follow Civitai’s Terms of Service. Entries must clearly fit one of the categories below. Off-theme submissions will be rejected. Let’s celebrate winter as a season of invention, legend, and wonder. ❄️
🎨 Image & Video Categories
⚔️ Winterborn Saga
Legends carved into frost. Viking spirit-walkers, alluring shieldmaidens, fierce berserkers, aurora shamans, and wandering hunters bound to ancient runes. Snow-swallowed forests, roaring hearth halls, frozen longships, and mythic beasts rise from Nordic tales. This category celebrates heroic winter fantasy, epic action, and ancient power.
🍬 Gingerbread Menagerie
Candy-crafted creatures brought to life by holiday magic. Gingerbread animals, caramel beasts, sugar-glazed owls, marshmallow bears, and entire edible fantasy ecosystems. Bright, whimsical, imaginative, and playful. This category is sweet, surreal, and joyfully magical.
⚙️ Arcane Workshop
The great creation-forges of winter. Magical artisans, clockwork toys, enchanted machinery, glowing runes, and living inventions assembled in frost-filled halls. From mecha-gnomes and arcane engines to crystalline tools and animated constructs, this category celebrates invention, craft, and magical engineering.
🌬️ Northwind Spirits
Elemental beings shaped from storm, mist, ice, and breath. Whispering wind spirits, living blizzards, towering air elementals, frost phantoms, and unseen forces guiding the winter skies. Ethereal, otherworldly, and atmospheric, this category embodies winter as a living force.
🔮 Snowglobe Realms
Entire worlds sealed in miniature. Floating snowglobes containing tiny kingdoms, frozen villages, looping storms, enchanted forests, and pocket universes trapped in time. Whimsical, storybook, and surreal, this category celebrates small worlds with big imagination.
🏆 Category Prizes
❄️ All 5 Categories
1st Place (Static Image)
– 150,000 ⚡Buzz + Valkyrie Cosmetic Set
1st Place (Video)
– 175,000 ⚡Buzz + Mecha Gnome Cosmetic Set
2nd Place (Static Image)
– 100,000 ⚡Buzz + Valkyrie Cosmetic Set
2nd Place (Video)
– 125,000 ⚡Buzz + Mecha Gnome Cosmetic Set
3rd Place (Static Image)
– 50,000 ⚡Buzz + Valkyrie Cosmetic Set
3rd Place (Video)
– 75,000 ⚡Buzz + Mecha Gnome Cosmetic Set
Valkyrie Cosmetic Set (Badge, Profile Background, Content Frame)
Mecha Gnoma Cosmetic Set (Badge, Profile Background, Content Frame)
🎁 Participation Rewards
Submit 5 accepted entries
→ Earn the Static Winter Festival Badge ❄️
Submit 10 accepted entries
→ Earn the Animated Winter Festival Badge ❄️✨
💎 NEW: The Winter Jackpot ❄️⚡
This year’s Winter Festival introduces a community-powered jackpot.
How the Winter Jackpot Works
The jackpot starts at 250,000 ⚡Buzz
Each participant who submits 10 entries AND gets all 10 accepted increases the jackpot
Each full 10-acceptance participant adds +500 ⚡Buzz to the pool
This means:
The more creators fully participate, the bigger the jackpot becomes
Jackpot Entry Rules
Every accepted submission counts as one entry into the jackpot drawing
You may submit up to 10 entries, so your name can appear up to 10 times
You do not need to win a category prize to win the jackpot
Any participant with at least one accepted entry is eligible
Jackpot Drawing
At the end of the contest:
We’ll host a live stream
Showcase category winners and standout entries
Then draw one winner from the jackpot pool
The winner receives the entire Winter Jackpot Buzz amount
📅 Contest Duration & Creation Rules
Entries must be created and submitted within the official contest window.
✔ Creation start: December 12th, 2025
✔ Submission deadline: January 2nd, 2026 at 23:59 CST
Works created before December 12th, 2025 are not eligible.
This includes:
Older images or videos
Remasters of previous work
Re-edits of older generations
If your entry was rejected, check the creation date first. This is the single most common rejection reason.
🖼️ Submission Limits
Maximum 10 total entries per participant
Entries may be a mix of images and videos
Every entry must clearly belong to one category
Each entry must be submitted to the correct category
🚨 Read This Before Submitting
Why entries get rejected
Most rejections happen for the same reasons every contest. Read this carefully.
❌ Reason #1: Created outside the allowed dates
If it wasn’t created between December 12th, 2025 and January 2nd, 2026, it does not qualify.
Editing an old image does not make it new.
❌ Reason #2: Does not clearly fit a category
This contest has five specific categories. Your submission must obviously fit one of them.
If someone has to guess where your entry belongs, it will be rejected.
Examples of what does not work:
Generic winter scenes with no clear theme
A single Christmas tree with no narrative context
Images that are “winter vibes” but not tied to any category
If it doesn’t clearly fall into:
Nordic legends and Valkyries
Gingerbread or food-based creatures
Mecha gnomes and arcane machinery
Winter spirits and elementals
Snowglobe miniature worlds
…it will be rejected.
❌ Reason #3: Submitted to the wrong category
This is extremely common.
If you submit:
A Valkyrie into Gingerbread Menagerie
A mecha gnome into Winterborn Saga
A snow elemental into Arcane Workshop
…it will be rejected.
We review tens of thousands of entries. We do not manually reassign categories.
It is your responsibility to select the correct one.
Wrong category = rejection.
❌ Reason #4: Not SFW (PG / PG-13 only)
This contest is SFW only.
Not allowed:
Explicit sexual content
Sexual acts or fetish material
Heavy sexual innuendo
“Softcore” content pushing beyond PG-13
Stylized characters are fine.
Overt sexualization is not.
✅ Not sure if your entry fits?
Ask before submitting.
You can:
Ask in the Civitai Discord
Ask the community
Ask ChatGPT or another LLM if your idea fits a category
We are generous when reviewing, but we do not bend rules for unclear or off-theme submissions.
🧠 Generation Rules
All submissions must be AI-generated
Any generation ecosystem is allowed:
Civitai tools
Local workflows
Third-party platforms (ChatGPT, Midjourney, NanoBanana, etc.)
img2img, inpainting, and img2video are allowed
You do not need to post your workflow publicly when submitting.
🧾 Verification (Winners Only)
To claim a prize:
Winners may be asked to share prompts or workflow details
This is only required if you win, and we ask
Entries that cannot be reasonably verified as AI-generated will be disqualified
⚠️ Conduct
No plagiarism, cheating, or falsified data
Submitting others’ work results in immediate disqualification
Violations may result in site penalties
🧹 Eligibility
SFW only (PG / PG-13)
Must follow Civitai’s Terms of Service
Each participant may win only one category
Winning one category makes you ineligible for others
🕸️ Quick Checklist
Before submitting, confirm:
✔ Created between Dec 12, 2025 – Jan 2, 2026
✔ Clearly fits one category
✔ Submitted to the correct category
✔ SFW / PG-13
✔ AI-generated
If any of these are false, the entry will be rejected.