Call for entries Game Award 2025

The call offers the opportunity to become part of the festival and reach out to thousands of children and an international audience of experts specialized in children’s media.

Submissions for the 2025 Game Award are accepted from 18 March until 30 June 2025.

The project should be completed between 2024 and September 2025. Projects that are not fully completed may be submitted but must be substantially playable and be made accessible for the jury and the visitors of the festival. The MediaLab is targeted towards children aged 3-14 and all works presented in it should be suitable for that age group. However, it is not necessary for a project to be especially created for children only.

We will consider projects of:

• excellent artistic quality
• innovation
• creativity / authenticity
• and whether it is fun to play.

A professional committee will select a maximum of 10 titles and nominate a top 3. The full selection will receive the opportunity to showcase their project in the MediaLab at Cinekid Festival in the Netherlands. A youth jury will then choose the winner from the top 3, who will be awarded the Game Award. The winner receives a Cinekid Lion and a cheque of €2,500.

The Game Award underlines the growing role games play in contemporary children’s lives. Games connect, entertain, and enlighten, more so than ever before. Cinekid recognizes the importance of being able to point children towards games that provide more than merely a simple click-and-swipe game, and of providing alternatives to popular RPGs and shooters.

Cinekid Festival is the world’s largest festival for children’s film and media. The 39th edition of the festival will take place from 11 October until 26 October 2025. During the festival Cinekid presents the MediaLab, an exhibition of interactive and immersive installations, workshops and games in Amsterdam and 6 other cities in the Netherlands.  

Yearly, the festival welcomes some 50,000 visitors, 600 international professionals including partner festivals, producers, broadcasters, distributors, agents, curators and artists, and garners a wide variety of national and international media attention. 
 
Rules and regulations can be found here. 
   
For further information on submitting a project feel free to contact our MediaLab team at medialab@cinekid.nl.