The Animated Sticker Contest begins tomorrow.

The task for the first round will be to create two sticker packs with at least 3 animated stickers in each. No sounds will be required at this stage.

All details will be published in this channel.

Animated Sticker Contest: Round 1

Status:
🏆 Evaluating results. View Submissions

Dates: 11 Mar - 26 Mar (23:59 Dubai time)
Prizes in the first round: A contract to finish each winning sticker pack at $200 per sticker, invitation to Round 2.

The goal in this round is to create two sticker packs with at least 3 animated stickers in each:

• At least one of your sticker packs must use people as characters.
• All stickers inside one pack must feature the same character.
• Each Sticker inside your packs must express an emotion.
• When choosing emotions for your stickers, start with these: 😂😘👍😨👋.
• You may submit more than three stickers in each pack.
• You may not submit more than two packs.
• Your Animated Stickers must follow these specifications: https://contest.com/docs/animated_stickers

You will submit links to your sticker packs to @ContestBot. Submissions will become available closer to the deadline.

Winners in this round will get the opportunity to join Telegram’s pool of animated sticker artists and to participate in the next round of the contest.

Winners will also be offered to complete their winning sticker packs (to reach 15 stickers per pack) and receive a reward of $200 per sticker in a completed pack.

Good luck! 🏆

Correction: the prize is of course $200 per each sticker in a completed pack (that gets chosen as one of the winners).

Update on the Second Round of the iOS Contest:

Given the strict deadlines, we decided to evaluate all apps supporting at least WatchOS 7. Support for WatchOS 6 will still bring you bonus points, but is no longer obligatory.

Current Contests (updated: November 2022)

Results Announced
🏆 Android Contest (view results)
🏆 Sticker App Contest (view results)
🏆 iOS Contest – WatchOS
🏆 Data Clustering Contest
🏆 Animated Sticker Contest
🏆 Aptitude Test Contest
🏆 GIF Contest (view submissions)
🏆 Android Design Contest (view results)
🏆 Windows Design Contest (view results)
🏆 Telegram X Android Competition: Round 1 (view results)
🏆 Smart Contract Cracking Competition (view results)
🏆 Telegram X Android Competition: Round 2 (view results)
🏆 iOS Contest 2022, Round 1 – Media editor (view results)

🏆 GIF Contest: Round 1

Status: Evaluating results. View Submissions

Dates: 17 Mar - 31 Mar (23:59 Dubai time)
Prize fund in the first round: $50,000

The goal in this round is to create 5 or more GIF-style reaction videos (see example here) that express emotions similar to these emoji:
😂😘👍😨👋
😍😡🥳😳🙄
😎👎😭🥺😐
🤦🤷‍♂️😏🤔😒

Format: MP4, no sound
Aspect ratio: 1:1 – 4:3 and anything in between
Max. length: 5 seconds
Max. size: 1 MB

We will give preference to original content created by the participants themselves, but you can also use other content if this is appropriate.

We will explain how to submit your reaction videos next week.

Reaction videos created in this contest will be watermarked with links to the public channels of their creators – and potentially suggested to Telegram users.

Winners will be able to take part in the following rounds.

Good luck! 🏆

In case you don't know what a GIF-Style reaction video is, it's this thing 👆

🏆 Android Contest, Round 1: Results

The results of the Android Fixes Contest have arrived! Meet the winners:

1st PLACE – $15,000
🥇Cool Hare – 32 out of 45 correctly implemented fixes and improvements, including both personal findings and issues reported on the Bug Platform.

2nd PLACE – $10,000
🥈Gentle Otter – 23 out of 26 correctly implemented fixes. The best accepted-declined ratio overall.

3rd PLACE – $5,000
🥉Clever Wasp – 22 out of 36 correctly implemented fixes for issues reported on the Bug Platform.
🥉Sunny Ant – 15 out of 20 acceptable fixes, some of them for the media editor.
🥉Dreamy Crab – 11 out of 14 acceptable fixes in various sections of the app.
🥉Modest Dolphin – 10 of 10 acceptable improvements for the media editor.
🥉Sacred Gorilla – 6 out of 9 acceptable fixes.

Honorable mentions
🎖Fit Falcon – $1,500 for a useful pack of optimizations (3 of 3).
🎖Desert Falcon – $1,500 (integrated Animations from the iOS Contest).
🎖Large Flamingo – $600 (3 out of 4).
🎖Quirky Raven – $600 (2 out of 6).
🎖Sharp Mule – $400 (2 out of 6).
🎖Mad Seal – $200 (1 out of 6).
🎖Hairy Monkey – $200 (1 out of 2).
🎖Gentle Crow – $200 (1 of 1).
🎖Earnest Kiwi – $200 (1 of 1).
🎖Fluffy Sheep – $200 (1 out of 1).
🎖Night Gnat – $200 (3 out of 3).
🎖Earnest Butterfly – $200 (1 out of 3).
🎖Fit Rhino – $200 (2 out of 7).

Some of the contestants focused on the Camera 2 API/ CameraX integration, but were sadly unable to overcome performance/stability issues:

🏅Perfect Crab – $1,000.
🏅Dreamy Eagle – $1,400 (+2 accepted fixes).
🏅Fairy Zebra – $1,000.

Detailed comments from our judges about each of the submissions are available on contest.com

Stay tuned: The next stage of the Android contest starts tomorrow.

Android Contest: Round 2

Status:
🏆 Results announced.

Prize fund: $50,000
Ended: 23:59 on April, 4 (Dubai Time)

Task: Implement animations in Telegram for Android based on the mockups provided, optimize them to run on older devices, and create an editor that allows tweaking their parameters.

Who can participate: Everyone. Participants of the first round may have a slight advantage because they are already familiar with Telegram's source code.

Details:
https://contest.com/docs/android2021-r2

Android Contest 2021, Round 2: Animations.
Contest details

Participants in Round 2 of the iOS Contest can now submit their WatchOS apps to @ContestBot as a ZIP archive with their source code (choose 2021 WatchOS Contest).

Before submitting, please make sure that you’ve tested your apps on macOS 11 (clean install).

The archive must contain a readme file with build instructions.

iOS Contest, Round 2: Submissions

We received 9 submissions for the Second Round of the iOS contest (watchOS).

Some of them used TDLib and because of this can currently only run on emulators, not on real Apple Watches. We decided to upgrade TDLib to make them work on actual devices before we evaluate the submissions.

Naturally, we will take into account the effort that was required to make the apps work without TDLib and these tweaks on our side when assigning awards. Stay tuned! 🏆

Participants of the Animated Sticker Contest can now submit their stickers to @ContestBot.

The bot will ask you for two links to animated sticker packs created by the account you're submitting them from. Each pack must contain 3 or more stickers.

Animated Sticker Contest: Submissions

Submissions for the first round of the Animated Sticker contest are now available on contest.com:
https://contest.com/stickers2021-r1

Everybody is welcome to view the 148 submissions we received while our judges are evaluating them.

(Remember that user ratings will not affect the decisions of our judges, there will be no need to raise your fan armies to win. 😌)

You can now submit your reaction videos to the GIF Contest by uploading them to one of your public channels.

Please read the full instructions before you upload anything:
https://contest.com/docs/gif-contest-submission

In addition to submitting your videos, you MUST register with @ContestBot (send /start, then choose GIF Animation Contest).

The deadline is March 31, 23:59 (DUBAI TIME). We recommend you to begin submitting your videos as early as possible.

Good luck!

Submissions for the GIF Сontest are open until March 31, 23:59 (Dubai time).

We suggest that you try submitting at least some of your reaction videos early – to make sure you've familiarized yourself with the process. Videos submitted late will not be accepted for the contest.

Instructions:
https://contest.com/docs/gif-contest-submission

If you have any questions, please check the FAQ.

A few extra tips, in case you're having any issues:

1. Prepare your videos for publication in an external video editor (it is not recommended to use the built-in Telegram media editor for this purpose).
- Aspect ratio: between 1:1 and 4:3
- No audio track! (especially important for uploading via desktop apps)
- Suggested width: 380, 640 or 848
- Suggested height: a multiple of 16 (but remember to use the correct aspect ratio!)

(Other widths/heights may also work – but if you run into problems, try the suggested ones.)

2. Once you've prepared your videos for publication, use an official app to send them to your channel.
- Send as a video (not file).
- If you use a mobile app, set the maximum quality.
- If you use iOS, disable audio before sending (tap on the speaker icon) – even if you removed the soundtrack when preparing the video for publication.
- If you use Android, don't disable audio – instead remove the soundtrack when preparing video for publication.

3. If @ContestBot tells you your videos were not accepted, you can tap the "Show videos with issues" button to get details on each problematic video.

4. If the bot tells you you haven't submitted any videos, see number 1 in this message👆.

Good luck! And don't wait until the last moment. 😉

If you are trying to submit videos to the GIF Contest, but no watermark appears and @ContestBot doesn’t recognize them, make sure that you have disabled the soundtrack completely before uploading. Your video file must have no audio channels for Telegram Desktop to recognize it as a “GIF” (and for the bot to accept it).

There are many ways of disabling the audio track in a video. If you’re having difficulties, we suggest googling for a solution that works best for you.

Participants of the first round of the Data Clustering Contest can now view their preliminary results on the contest platform:
https://contest.com/dc2021-r1 (the link will only work for contest participants)

Preliminary results for each submission include 0-100 ratings for each part of the task, our preliminary comments, an archive with an evaluation dataset, and a log file from the submission.

Stay tuned for the final results coming soon!