Berlinale submission guide: sections, fees, eligibility

Berlinale runs in February each year and is one of the major European launchpads. Its programme is split across sections with different identities, teams, and eligibility expectations, so the section you target matters.

Check the current official submission portal before relying on any section, fee, deadline, or premiere rule.

The seven sections

• Competition: the Golden Bear section for the highest-profile features, with the strictest premiere expectations.
• Perspectives: a newer section focused on debut features.
• Panorama: arthouse, political, queer, and formally distinctive work often sits here.
• Generation: films for or about children and young people
• Berlinale Shorts: formally bold short films, with its own eligibility and premiere expectations.
• Forum: experimental, formally adventurous, often political. European premiere acceptable.
• Berlinale Classics: restorations, retrospectives, archive work

The European premiere trap

Berlinale premiere expectations are section-specific and can conflict with earlier European festival plans. A film that has already played another major European festival may no longer fit the section you hoped for, even if another Berlinale strand remains possible.

Picking your European premiere festival first is, in effect, a Berlinale decision. If Berlin is your target, read the current Berlinale rules before you commit to Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Rotterdam, or another European premiere.

There is also a nationality split worth knowing. German films face a stricter bar: Competition expects a world premiere from them. Non-German films can clear Competition with a world or international premiere, and Panorama and Forum will take a European premiere as the minimum. So a German film and an international film with the same screening history can land in very different positions.

Fees

• Features: check the current portal fee for your section and deadline.
• Shorts: check the current portal fee for the Berlinale Shorts call.

Fees, waivers, and late-submission options can change by year. Treat the official portal as the source of truth.

Deadlines

• Features: usually close in the autumn before the February festival.
• Shorts: usually close later than features, but still in the autumn cycle.
• Late submissions: only rely on them if the official portal explicitly offers them for the current year.

Decisions typically arrive before the February festival. Berlin in February is cold, plan your wardrobe accordingly.

Submission via the Berlinale portal

Submissions go through the official berlinale.de portal. The process:

1. Create an account on the Film Entry portal
2. Pick the eligible section or category the portal allows
3. Fill out production details, runtime, format, technical spec
4. Upload or link the selection screener in the current required format
5. Provide subtitles or caption files exactly as the portal requests
6. Pay the fee

Technical spec for the screener

Screener specs change, but expect the festival to care about:

• A stable screener file or link that plays reliably
• Readable subtitles when the film is not in the language requested by the portal
• A current technical format, codec, and resolution accepted by the portal
• Secure access that does not block programmers

Online release rule

This is the rule most people get wrong. The ban on prior internet, VOD, or TV exhibition is absolute and applies to every Berlinale section, including online festivals. It is not section-dependent. What varies by section is only the geographic premiere minimum (world versus European), not whether a prior online release is allowed. A single virtual screening can therefore end your eligibility across the whole festival. Check the current rules and ask the festival if your case is ambiguous.

What Berlinale programmes

Berlinale has a long-standing reputation for politically engaged filmmaking, formal experimentation, and giving European debut features a platform. The Perspectives strand was created specifically to support first features. Forum has launched some of the most respected experimental documentary work of the last 20 years.

A glossy commercial feature with star casting is more likely at Cannes or Toronto. A politically charged debut feature with formal risk is more likely at Berlin.

Frequently asked questions