earlybirdgetstheword | 2025 Nomination Guidelines (Reply)

These are the guidelines for 2025.

Fandoms qualify if there have been less than 50 new works posted to AO3 from January 1st 2025 that are:

In English
At least 1000 words
Complete at the time nominations open i.e. April 20th 21:00 Eastern Time.

To check if your fandom qualifies, you can add the following filters on AO3:

Under More Options, select >Completion Status. Click 'Complete works only'.

Select >Word Count. Input From: 1000.

Select >Date Updated. Input From: 2025-01-01 (or select from the calendar).

Under Language, select 'English' from the dropdown menu.

If your fandom comes up to more than 50, you can scroll back up the Filters menu to Sort By and select 'Date Posted' from the dropdown menu. There might be some works on the last page that were first published before 1st January 2025. These works will not count towards the total 50 tally.

Crossover fandoms will be accepted if both fandoms are eligible under the 50 rule. Please nominate Crossover ships under Crossover Fandom

The following works will not be included in the 50 tally:

Works marked as complete but are not actually complete (i.e. the author has explicitly stated that the work has been abandoned). Works with open or ambiguous endings will count towards the tally.
Works posted to Yuletide related collections.
Artworks, including artworks that are accompanied by less than 1000 written words. Artworks accompanied by 1000 or more written words will be included in the tally.

We will not be accepting Original Work, Original Characters, RPF, recursive fanwork, and meta at this time.

If you feel your fandom should qualify, please refer to the evidence post linked here. We will consider all replies to the evidence post on a case by case basis.