Contest Entry Form Template
Run a judged contest. Entries arrive with the work attached, the rules accepted, and duplicates locked out from the start.
Show us your best shot. One entry per person, winners chosen by our judging panel, and every entrant lands on the announcement list.
A contest is a lead magnet with a judging problem attached. The entries need to arrive complete, with work, title, and statement, provably owned, and one per person, or announcement day turns awkward. This template is built backwards from that judging table.
What each field does for the judges. Full name and notification email are the prize-delivery pair, and the email label says what it will be used for, which raises data quality and reads as fair play. The entry title does underrated work: it forces entrants to frame their own piece, gives judges a handle for deliberation ("the lighthouse one"), and hands your announcement post its copy ready-made. The upload block is locked to JPEG and PNG at up to 10MB, tight enough that judges never wrestle a codec and roomy enough for print-quality submissions. The artist statement stays optional but prompted, and the entries that carry one tend to survive the first cut, which the prompt hints at without saying so. The rules acceptance is a required single choice with one affirmative option: an explicit act rather than a pre-ticked assumption, recorded with every entry.
One entry per person, enforced. Turn on duplicate prevention in Settings, per device or per IP, and repeat submissions bounce on their own. Pair it with a closing date in the form's close rules, and the contest ends itself at the deadline instead of leaning on you to remember at midnight, so late arrivals see your custom closed message.
How judging runs from here. Every entry sits in the responses view with its image attached. Download originals per response, or export the CSV as the master scoresheet while judges work through the gallery. If you route entries to a shared channel with a webhook, the panel can react to each piece as it arrives.
What we kept off the entry. Social handles and share-to-win mechanics stay out, because they contaminate a judged contest with popularity dynamics and the platform rules around them keep shifting. Age and region eligibility gates also stayed off the default; add a dropdown if your prize's legal terms demand one.
Who runs contests like this. Photography communities, brands running creative UGC campaigns, local arts councils, and newsletters gamifying their audience all reach for it, since anyone whose prize is worth a portfolio piece has a judging table to fill.
Set it up before you publish. Rewrite the intro with your real prize and deadline, widen the file types if you accept PDFs or design files, and set the close rules before you publish rather than after the first late entry argues with you. The entrant list is the quiet second prize: every contest ends with a CSV of people who cared enough to make something.
Frequently asked questions
How do entrants attach their work?
Through the file upload block, which accepts one JPEG or PNG up to 10MB in this template. You can widen the allowed types or raise the file count in the block settings if your contest needs it.
Can people enter more than once?
With duplicate prevention enabled in Settings, submissions from the same device or IP are blocked after the first. State the one-entry rule in your intro so the block never surprises anyone.
How do I close entries at the deadline?
Set a close date (or a maximum number of entries) in Settings. After that, visitors see your custom closed message instead of the form, with no midnight manual shutdown required.
Where do judges review everything?
The responses view shows each entry with its uploaded image, title, and statement together. Export the CSV as a scoring sheet, or push entries to a shared channel via webhook as they arrive.