Artlist $250K Seedance 2.5 Challenge: Are you in?

The Artlist $250K Seedance 2.5 challenge is your opportunity to make the most creative 30-second video using Seedance 2.5. Post it to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or LinkedIn, and you could be one of 25 winners sharing a $250,000 prize pool — that's up to $10,000 each.

What this challenge is really asking is whether you can make something that stops people scrolling. Something that lands in the first two seconds and doesn't let go. In a feed full of AI video, that's a harder brief than it sounds, and ultimately a more worthwhile one.

Winners are judged primarily on two things: creativity and engagement. Engagement covers likes, comments, shares, and saves, and usually these are the videos that get people to stop, watch, and react because they are creative.

Why Seedance 2.5?

Seedance 2.5 is ByteDance's most advanced AI video model and gives you everything you need to answer it. You can generate up to 30 seconds of video in one prompt using up to 50 multimodal references. The results are genuinely hard to distinguish from professionally shot footage with photorealistic motion, complex lighting, and detailed environments. 

Seedance 2.5 is the chosen model for this challenge because it removes the ceiling. There's no technical excuse for a compelling video. The model gives you the maximum capabilities, and what you do with it is the variable that matters.

What makes a video impossible to ignore?

The videos that stop people scrolling. Create up to 30 seconds with Seedance 2.5, using up to 50 references — so there's no excuse for playing it safe. The strongest entries won't just be visually impressive. They'll have a point of view. They'll make someone feel something in the first two seconds and not let go.

A few creative directions worth exploring: unexpected scale, surreal logic, genre collisions, emotional contrast. But honestly, the best ideas haven't been tried yet. That's the point.

"You know it in the first two seconds. You're pulled in, in the best way. You feel something, the story connects with you, and surprises you before you can look away. The visuals are doing something you haven't seen before, or the story lands somewhere you didn't expect. That's the bar. Just impossible to look away from."

—  Ronni Azulay, AI Video Creative, Artlist

How to enter

The challenge has a few requirements for entry:

1. Generate your 30-second (minimum) video using Seedance 2.5 on Artlist

2. Download and add the challenge badge — it must be visible for the full duration of your video

3. Post publicly to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or LinkedIn with #ArtlistSeedance25 and tag @Artlist by August 26th — and keep it public.

Your post must stay public so that it is searchable on your social channel until the foreseeable future.

The AI slop problem — and why it matters here

One thing we are not looking for is AI slop. But defining what that is is tricky, and the team at Artlist agrees it’s AI content that is usually generated at speed and posted without a second thought.

That's not what this challenge is about.

The difference between AI slop and AI filmmaking isn't the model. It's the intent behind it. The best AI videos being made right now feel authored — there's a decision behind every reference, a reason for every cut, a point of view running through the whole thing. You can feel the creator in the work.

Seedance 2.5 gives you up to 50 references and granular control over dialogue, music, and effects. That's not a feature list — it's an invitation to actually direct something. The creators who win this challenge won't be the ones who generated the most videos. They'll be the ones who knew what they were trying to say and used the tools to say it.

Enter the $250K Seedance 2.5 Challenge

Not on Artlist yet? Get access to all the leading AI video models, including Seedance 2.5 with a subscription plan, and start creating today.