Create a contest

Click your avatar in the top right and choose My Contests. This page collects everything you are involved in - contests you own, contests you help run as an admin, and contests you judge. Click New Contest to start.

Three fields are the most important:

• Name - what the contest is called, shown everywhere.
• Tagline - one line, shown on the contest card and in the page header.
• Description - the long text: your rules, what you are looking for, prizes, anything a builder needs to know. It supports Markdown, so headings, bold text, links and bullet lists all work.

The Category dropdown is your contest’s theme - Castle, Space, Pirates and so on. It is optional, but it is how builders filter the contest list, so picking the closest match makes your contest easier to find.

Pick a Start date and an End date. Builders can only submit while the contest is running: before the start it shows as Upcoming, after the end as Ended, and the entry button disappears.

You enter both in your own timezone. Every visitor sees the same moment converted to theirs, so nobody has to do the maths.

Website and Discord link are both optional. Whatever you put here shows up as a small link in the contest header - handy if the real conversation happens on your Discord server or your club’s site.

Two checkboxes at the bottom control who can see the contest:

• Draft - only you and your admins can see it. Leave this ticked while you are still setting things up.
• Private - the contest never appears in the public list and is only visible to you, your admins and your jury. Regular users cannot submit at all; admins add entries on their behalf. Use it for invite-only contests or ones where entries arrive by email.

Click Create Contest. You land straight on your new contest page. While Draft is ticked nobody else can reach it, so it is safe to leave half-finished.

The Manage button in the top right is your admin panel - you will spend the next few minutes in there.

In the admin panel open Settings. The first section is Thumbnail - click the dashed box, pick a photo (PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 10 MB), drag the 16:9 frame over the part you want, and click Save.

This image is the face of your contest: it shows up on the contest card and in the page header.

Open Categories in the sidebar. Each category needs a Name and, ideally, a Description explaining what belongs in it - builders read this before entering. Tick Collaborative if you want to allow team entries in that category.

Click Add Category and it appears in the table below, where the pencil icon lets you edit it, attach example images, or delete it via the bin icon.

Open Criteria. Each criterion is one thing the jury gives points for - "Presentation", "Parts Usage", "Originality". Give it a Name, a Description (the jury reads this while scoring, so be specific about what earns points), an Icon, and a Max Score between 1 and 20.

A submission’s total is the sum of all criteria, so the maximum scores are also how you weight them: a criterion out of 20 matters four times as much as one out of 5.

Open Team. There are two lists:

• Admins help you run the contest - settings, categories, criteria and jury. Only the owner can add or remove admins.
• Jury members score the entries. They don't see the admin panel from their accounts.

Start typing a BrickContests username in the search box and click the person to add them. They get an email letting them know, and access is immediate.

Back to Settings, untick Draft, and click Update Contest. Your contest now appears in the public contest list, and builders can submit as soon as the start date passes.

From here on the day-to-day work - watching entries arrive, chasing the jury, publishing results - is covered in the Run your contest How-to guide.