Chroma Awards Season 2 offers $450,000+ in prizes, and ElevenLabs adds its own $22,000

ElevenLabs has opened submissions for Season 2 of the Chroma Awards, the AI creative competition it incubates. It offers over $450,000 in cash and travel perks, plus a separate $22,000 pool for projects that use ElevenLabs tools.

Five divisions, one project per category

Entries are accepted in Film, Music Videos, Advertising, Games and Behind-The-Scenes. According to ElevenLabs, Film and Music Videos stay at the core, while Games and Advertising get more emphasis this year because AI-powered multimedia work is growing quickly there. Each division has its own categories, rules and prizes.

Creators can submit as many projects as they like, including several in the same category, but each project may enter only one category. Any project made after February 1, 2026 is eligible. Sponsor tools are available as free trials from today, and ElevenLabs puts the total value of trials and promotions at $1M.

Entries go through three rounds of review by a global judging panel. ElevenLabs says it is inviting four judges per category, drawn from both traditional creative industries and AI. Winners are due on a livestream on February 11, 2027, and celebrated at an in-person gala. A dedicated Student Awards category offers paid internships to winners.

The first season, launched in 2025, drew more than 5,550 creators from 122 countries and over 6,600 projects, according to ElevenLabs. It had over $190,000 in cash prizes and more than 75 sponsors and partners. Season 2 therefore more than doubles the cash and travel pool.

A $22,000 pool that needs no separate entry

ElevenLabs is adding its own awards: $22,000 in cash across 22 winners. Any entry in any division that uses ElevenLabs in a significant way, for example through ElevenCreative or ElevenMusic, is automatically considered.

First place gets $6,000, a VIP trip to the awards ceremony and a Creator Partner Program position. Second place gets $3,000 and third $1,500, with the same trip and program spot. Places four to eleven receive $750 each plus a program position, and places twelve to twenty-two receive $500 each.

A separate ElevenLabs Music Video of the Year award goes to a Music Video Division entry whose soundtrack was substantially made with the ElevenMusic model. The winner gets a VIP trip, an on-stage acceptance speech, a year of ElevenLabs Pro and a program position. Readers who want background on the company’s tools can find it in our ElevenLabs review and in our earlier piece on its music technology.

Dates and details the announcement leaves open

The announcement is not consistent on the deadline. Its opening paragraph says entries run until January 1, 2027, while the how-to-enter section says submissions close on January 7, 2027 at 11:45 PM PT. The contest site, chromaawards.com, also lists January 7, so that appears to be the operative date, but ElevenLabs has not corrected the earlier line.

The gala is also vague. The announcement says only that winners will be celebrated at an in-person gala. The contest site lists it as April 2027, with the date to be announced and no location given. That matters for the VIP trip prizes, which are tied to the ceremony. The site’s judge section also shows only previous judges, so the current panel has not been named there.

The prize split shows how much of the money comes from sponsors. According to the contest site, the Creative Tools division is worth $263,750 across 27 sponsor-linked categories, including ElevenLabs, CapCut, Kling, Luma and Adobe. The other divisions are far smaller: $38,000 for Film and TV, $35,000 for Ad, $24,000 for Music Video, $20,500 for Game and $17,000 for Behind-The-Scenes. The Student Awards total $60,500. Entrants who use a sponsor’s tool can therefore compete for extra prizes, which also means the largest purse depends on which software someone uses.

Student eligibility is narrower than the announcement suggests. The site says the paid internships are for entrants aged 18 to 24 and run in summer 2027.

For comparison, the first season ran on a shorter calendar. Business Wire coverage of the 2025 launch gave a November 3 deadline and a December 7, 2025 ceremony, against a roughly eleven-week window now.

ElevenLabs says judging applies film-festival standards and that AI is not why a project wins. That claim is the company’s own and cannot be checked until the judges and winners are public. The announcement also gives no sponsor-by-sponsor breakdown of the $1M in trials, and it does not say how the three review rounds map to the shortlisting and public voting stages shown on the site. The site lists shortlisting from January 8 to 21 and public voting and judging from January 21 to February 11.