$2.6M+ to Film a Future Worth Building — And Why You Should Vote Now
by Braden Kelley and Art Inteligencia
Innovation Shows Up First as a Story
Innovation almost always shows up first as a story. Someone writes down the submarine, the moon landing, the video call — and decades later we build it. Culture dreams of a destination. Engineering finds the path.
That is the remit of the Future Vision XPRIZE: a global competition — with a $3.5M+ prize pool and a $2.6M+ grand prize path to turn a short vision into a feature film — asking creators to show an optimistic, abundant, technology-enabled future worth wanting. Not a utopia without stakes. Not dystopia as the only imagination we fund. A future where humanity faces real danger and still figures something out — or at least believes it can.
The assignment was clear: a trailer of up to three minutes, plus a treatment of up to twelve pages, depicting a compelling hopeful future. Tools were wide open — traditional filmmaking, animation, AI, hybrids. The spirit was Star Trek’s deeper bet: that humanity can evolve intellectually, ethically, and socially toward greater understanding, possibility, and purpose. Judges for the competition include voices such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neal Stephenson, Mira Lane, and Rod Roddenberry. Finals land live at Moonshots LIVE in Los Angeles on September 25, 2026.
Why This Competition Matters Beyond the Prize
Incentive competitions are how XPRIZE has long pulled breakthroughs into the open. Future Vision flips the lens: the breakthrough here is collective imagination. Cautionary tales still matter — they help us navigate risk. But builders also need a north star. Soft landings for technology are designed. Soft landings for culture start with stories that make a better Tuesday feel real enough to pursue.
That is why this prize can inspire more than filmmakers and futurists. When the public watches fifty short visions of progress — climate and cities, longevity and memory, oceans and robotics, first contact and consciousness — people are not only entertained. They are rehearsing what “good” might look like. They are practicing hope with craft. Innovators get a richer brief than a white paper. Citizens get permission to want a future that is not only less bad, but more human.
Key Themes Across the Top 50
From more than 2,500 submissions, Range, XPRIZE, and Google selected fifty official films. Browse them and a pattern emerges — not a single prescribed future, but a cluster of human-centered themes:
- Connection and consciousness — how we stay human to each other when tools get intimate with mind and dream.
- Memory, biotech, and longevity — what we inherit, repair, and refuse to treat as disposable.
- Nature, climate, oceans, and energy — technology solving real planetary constraints, not escaping them in costume.
- AI, robotics, and cities — intelligence and infrastructure as partners in thriving, not only engines of extraction.
- Space and first contact — exploration as shared purpose, not only conquest theater.
The competition’s own brief says it well: technology solving problems, humanity thriving (not merely surviving), a future worth building, and stories that move people emotionally. The Top 50 are the proof that creators worldwide answered that brief with ambition.
Trailers Beat Paper Scripts — And AI Changed Who Can Compete
For decades, “vision” in innovation and entertainment often traveled as a PDF: treatments, decks, and scripts that only a small room could feel. A trailer is different. In three minutes you either earn belief or you do not. You show the stakes, the texture, the emotional residue. Creative teams get to demonstrate their thinking — world, tone, character, craft — over and above the traditional paper scripts that usually get circulated and politely ignored.
AI did not invent storytelling. It did change the cost of a compelling, professional-looking trailer. Small teams can now prototype cinematic language that once required budgets only studios could touch. That is not a guarantee of soul — fluency without contact is still decoration — but it is a genuine opening. More than 2,500 submissions is not a marketing slogan. It is evidence that the barrier to showing a future dropped, and the world answered.
Used well, AI becomes a soft landing for creation: glue and production friction absorbed so human judgment, taste, and meaning stay in the frame. Used poorly, it becomes dystopia cosplay at higher RPM. The Future Vision XPRIZE rewards the former — visions with craft and hope that still feel earned.
Pairwise Voting Is Open on the 50 Finalists
Right now the public gets a real job. The SPECS Audience Choice Award puts $100,000 behind crowd favorites — $50K for first, $30K for second, $10K for third, and $5K each for fourth and fifth — decided entirely by vote. Crowdvoting is powered in partnership with SIV.org, and the experience is built as a simple, human question: Which future do you prefer?
That pairwise framing matters. You are not ranking fifty titles in the abstract. You are choosing between living visions — side by side — the way culture actually chooses what it wants more of. Watch. Compare. Vote. On September 25, the Top 5 also screen live in Los Angeles, with the grand prize path aimed at producing the winning feature with Range Media Partners and a $2.6M+ package ($100K cash for screenplay development plus $2.5M equity investment toward production), alongside runners-up and Top 10 prizes across the wider pool.
How to Vote — and a Preview of My Top 3
You can watch the Top 50 and cast your Audience Choice votes at https://vote.futurevisionxprize.com/. It takes about a minute to start — and every pairwise choice is a small act of futurology: telling the culture which north stars deserve oxygen.
Here is a preview of my Top 3 from the fifty. These are not the only films worth your time — watch widely — but they are the three I keep returning to:
1. PROVENANCE — Chris Winterton
Themes: Memory · Biotech · Connection. In 2160, ancestral memory is inherited through craft, and a young ceramicist starts inheriting the one memory she cannot hold. Human-centered sci-fi at its best: technology intimate with identity, dignity still in the room.
2. Somewhere Past Midnight — Felix Roumagnac
Themes: Consciousness · Connection. Two teenagers meet inside on-demand lucid dreams and go looking for the boundless world childhood promised. A reminder that optimistic futures are not only about machines — they are about what we still long for when the tools get powerful.
3. Rock Rider — Christof Vonbank
Themes: Space · First Contact. A space trucker hauling a town-sized asteroid to an Earth he’s never touched finds a stowaway carrying proof we were never alone. Exploration with grit, wonder, and a future that still has room for surprise.
Then go vote for the futures you prefer: https://vote.futurevisionxprize.com/. Learn more about the competition at futurevisionxprize.com.
Stories shape what we fund, what we build, and what we forgive ourselves for wanting. Future Vision XPRIZE is a rare chance to put public imagination on a scoreboard that still has money, stages, and makers attached. Watch the fifty. Prefer a future on purpose. Soft landings for humanity start with north stars we can feel.
I’m curious! Please SHARE YOUR TOP 3 in the comments.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Future Vision XPRIZE?
Future Vision XPRIZE is a global sci-fi film competition from XPRIZE (with partners including Google and Range) inviting creators to submit up to three-minute trailers of optimistic, abundant futures. The prize pool is $3.5M+, with a $2.6M+ grand prize path to develop the winning vision into a feature film.
How do you vote in the Future Vision XPRIZE Audience Choice Award?
Go to https://vote.futurevisionxprize.com/ and compare finalist visions in a pairwise “Which future do you prefer?” experience. The SPECS Audience Choice Award distributes $100,000 based entirely on public voting. You can also browse all 50 official selections at https://fvxp.moonshots.com/.
How many submissions did Future Vision XPRIZE receive?
More than 2,500 films were entered worldwide. Fifty were selected as official finalists for public voting and the path toward live finals in Los Angeles on September 25, 2026.
What themes appear in Future Vision XPRIZE finalists?
Finalist themes span AI, biotech, cities, connection, consciousness, energy, first contact, longevity, memory, nature and climate, oceans, robotics, and space — unified by the remit of technology solving problems and humanity thriving in a future worth building.
Can AI be used to create a Future Vision XPRIZE trailer?
Yes. Competition guidelines allowed any production tools — traditional filming, animation, AI, or hybrids. AI lowered the barrier to professional-looking trailers and helped enable the scale of 2,500+ submissions, while human craft and hopeful storytelling remain what the remits reward.
Image Credits: Cursor
Content Authenticity Statement: The topic area, key elements to focus on, etc. were decisions made by Braden Kelley, with a little help from Cursor to clean up the article.
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I had the opportunity to hear Mark Synnott speak of how despite the enormous risk he undertakes in his climbing explorations, that the thing that scares him most is the possibility of slipping on easy ground. When he is attempting a difficult portion of a climb, he is always thinking about what his exposure to risk is, but on easy portion it is easy to forget to take proper precautions. Yet, when it comes to his kids Mark thinks he is probably one of the world’s most over-protective parents, but at the same time he wants to inspire his kids to be curious about the world.
Peter Diamandis talked about how we need to ask where a breakthrough should be possible and focus on structuring an innovation challenge to help harness people’s curiosity to push past current obstacles in thinking or execution. Peter has learned first-hand that small teams are amazingly powerful, and talked about how big organizations focus on reducing risk by throwing lots of money and resources at a challenge. On the flip side though, when you put a box around a challenge with a small budget and a small team, then that small team of people will know the traditional approach will fail – and try a different approach.
In speaking with David Gallo about exploration of the seas, he spoke about how when we oversell a danger like climate change in the media, it is damaging – there is no plastic island the size of Texas in the middle of the ocean. But there is a chemistry change in the ocean, a soup, a film leads to us eating our own garbage as plastic, flame retardants, and other runoff embed themselves in the tissue of the fish we eat. We have changed the temperature and the chemistry of the oceans, and anyone who has an aquarium knows that’s a bad idea.