Your invitations

Invitations is the third tab of your inbox, at /judge/inbox/invitations. It is every judging offer any festival has made you, in one list — and it is now where you answer them.

This is new. Until this release the only way to answer an invitation was the link in the email a festival sent you. That link still works and still does exactly what it always did — see Your judging invitation — but you no longer need it. Sign in, open the tab, and every invitation is there whether you kept the email or not.

Finding the screen

Inbox in the left navigation of your judging screens, then the Invitations tab. Its address is:

/judge/inbox/invitations

The tab strip is Messages · Alerts · Invitations, and the tab you are on is part of the address, so an invitation can be bookmarked or linked like any other page.

You have to have finished your judge profile first. Arriving before then sends you into setting up your judge profile at the step you have not answered yet — which is why the emailed link still matters: it is public, it needs no account, and it is the route for anybody who has not been through those four screens yet.

And you have to have agreed to the current Judge Code of Conduct. Without that, every judging screen — this one included — shows a one-box confirm page first. Confirm it and the tab opens where you asked. The emailed link is not held back this way: its own Accept carries the box. See The two role agreements.

The two numbers

• The amber count on the Inbox row in the sidebar is now unread inbox items + unread messages + invitations awaiting your answer. An invitation you have not answered pushes that number up until you do.
• The count on the Invitations tab is amber and shows how many are awaiting your answer; when none are, it goes quiet grey and shows the total number of invitations you hold.

Both are counted across every festival. The tab's count is read afresh every time you open the tab; the sidebar's moves the moment you answer an invitation — or act on anything else in the frame — and when you reload, but simply moving between screens leaves it as it was. Neither ticks over while you sit on a screen.

The five statuses

There are five, and only five:

There is no "counter offer" anywhere on this screen, and no way to reply to an invitation asking for different money — or asking to be paid on an offer that carries none. Accept, Decline and Block are the three answers there are. Asking in a reply to the invitation email is still how a different rate on an invitation gets discussed.

That is a fact about invitations, not about the whole platform. On an open-call application you name your own figures, and if the festival replies with different ones you can accept them or send back figures of your own — see When the festival replies with different rates. None of that reaches this screen: an invitation is an offer made to you, and it is still take it or leave it.

A withdrawn invitation is not listed at all. If a festival revokes an offer before you answer it, the row disappears and its address stops working — the same terminal state the emailed link gives you, and indistinguishable from an invitation that never existed.

Reading the list

One row per invitation, across every festival, and answered rows never leave it. There is no pruning and no archive here: an invitation you declined two seasons ago is still on the list.

A row awaiting your answer is the loud one: white, a thin indigo line down its left edge, and a bold festival name. Everything answered or expired goes quiet and grey. A deadline seven days away or closer is drawn in amber on both the row and the invitation's own page.

Answered and expired rows show no deadline at all — an em rule, — — because there is nothing left to act on by that date.

Every column heading sorts the list; press it again to flip the direction. Two things about the sort:

• Everything awaiting your answer stays above everything else, in both directions. Flipping the sort reorders within those two groups and never lifts a declined row above a live one.
• Sorting by pay ascending puts volunteer invitations and any invitation with no rates attached first, grouped together, because neither has a figure to compare.

The row's ⋯ menu repeats the festival and season and offers one item: Open and answer while the invitation is awaiting your answer, Open invitation otherwise. Nothing is answered from the list itself.

What the pay column shows

Both figures, always — a Technical line and a Creative line — because they are what each category pays, not what your particular roles earn.

• A range means the categories on your invitation pay different amounts. $4.00 to $12.00 is the lowest and the highest of them, never a total and never a sum of the two lines.
• A single figure means every category on your invitation pays the same.
• These are the figures that were frozen onto your invitation when it was sent. If the festival has since changed what its season posts, this does not move. See What an invitation pays.
• A volunteer invitation shows a quiet Volunteer pill in place of both lines. It is a fact about that one offer — a festival can pay some of its judges and ask you to volunteer on the same season, so the pill does not mean the panel is unpaid.
• An em rule, —, means a paid invitation with no rates attached to it yet. That is not the same as volunteer and is never drawn as volunteer.

Two rows from the same festival and the same season can differ here, if you were invited twice — the second offer replaces the first, and the list keeps both as the record.

The per-category breakdown is on the invitation's own page, which is where you are actually deciding.

Searching and filtering

• The search box — "Search your invitations" — matches the festival's name, the season, and who sent it. It does not match status labels; the filter beside it is for that.
• Status opens a list of the five statuses with a count beside each, and you can tick as many as you like. The counts are over all your invitations, not over what the filter is currently showing.
• Clear filters appears as soon as a search or a status is set.

There is no filter for volunteer invitations. Sorting by pay is what groups them.

Filtered down to nothing, the list says "No invitation matches these filters" — or "Nothing matches what you typed" — with "Try a different status, or clear the filters to see every invitation." and a Clear filters button.

With no invitations at all you get a different block, with no button, because there is nothing to clear:

No invitations yet

Festivals that want you on a panel invite you here. Open calls you can apply to yourself live on a separate screen.

The separate screen is Open calls.

Opening one invitation

The festival's name on a row, or Open and answer in its menu, opens the invitation's own page. Top to bottom:

The note is here and nowhere else on screen. The page the emailed link opens does not repeat it — this is the one place it is shown outside the email itself.

The rate table is the same table the emailed link shows, deliberately: two renderings of one offer must not disagree. Every figure is what one scorecard is worth, both columns are always shown, and nothing on it is a total. How to read it in full is on What an invitation pays.

On a volunteer invitation there is no rate table. The block is headed Categories on this season and reads:

This invitation is a volunteer one, so no rate is attached to any category and there is nothing to negotiate.

That sentence is all of it — the categories themselves are not listed on a volunteer invitation. Ask the festival what you would be scoring if it matters to you.

It is about THIS INVITATION, not about the season. A festival may take one judge on as a volunteer while paying its others, so a volunteer invitation does not tell you what the festival pays anybody else — and it is not meant to. What it tells you is the part that matters to you: no rate is attached to this invitation and there is nothing to negotiate.

A paid invitation with nothing attached reads "No per-category rates are attached to this invitation yet. The festival sets them before judging opens." Accept and Decline still work; ask the festival what you would be scoring first.

The footer, by status

What is not on this page

• Your roles. Nothing here says whether you were asked to file the technical scorecard, the creative one or both — the invitation email names them, and so does the page its link opens. Keep the email, or ask.
• How many submissions you would be given. Not on this page and not in the accept dialog. It is not decided yet.
• Any other judge. Not their names, not how many were invited, not what anybody else was offered — and not whether anybody else on that season is being paid.
• A way to change what you are paid, or to ask to be paid at all. See The five statuses.

Accepting

Accept invitation, then confirm:

Accept this invitation?

You join the Spring 2026 roster at Northern Lights Film Festival on the rates below.

You are on the season roster the moment you confirm. The confirmation to the festival sends as a background job, so you can leave this page.

On a volunteer invitation the middle line ends "…as a volunteer." instead.

Under those lines, one tick box: "I agree to the Judge Code of Conduct", where the name is a link that opens the document in a new tab. Confirming with it unticked does nothing but put "You need to agree to the Judge Code of Conduct to continue." under it. Ticking it records your agreement to the current version of the document with your account — see The two role agreements. Declining and blocking never ask for it.

What confirming does:

• You are on that season's roster straight away, as an active judge, on the terms the invitation named. Nothing else has to happen for that to be true.
• The terms are now frozen for good. Nobody at the festival can change what you are paid on that season afterwards — or move your place between paid and volunteer. A fresh invitation is the only way anything moves, and it is a new offer you would read first.
• The festival is emailed — "Your name has accepted your invitation to judge the festival". It goes to the people who hold access to that season, not necessarily to whoever sent the invitation, and it goes out on FilmScorecard's next scheduled run rather than instantly. You do not have to wait on the page for it.
• You stay where you are. The page redraws itself as Accepted, with a link to your judging dashboard. There is no queue waiting for you until the festival releases one.

Accepting the same invitation twice does nothing the second time, and neither does accepting one that was already answered from the emailed link.

Where the work then appears depends on the terms: a paid place gets a statement and a balance on Earnings; a volunteer place is counted on that screen's Volunteer tab, with no money against it.

Declining

Decline, then confirm:

Decline this invitation?

The festival will see that you are not taking the Spring 2026. Nothing else on your account changes.

The invitation closes and cannot be accepted afterwards. The festival sees your answer on its own screen, and can invite you again for another season.

Three things worth being precise about, because the wording is:

• No email is sent. Accepting emails the festival; declining sends nothing at all. What the festival gets is a status change on its own screen, which it will see next time it looks.
• There is no reason field, and the festival is never told why. Declining because an offer carries no pay looks exactly like declining for any other reason, so say so in a reply to the email if you want them to know.
• It cannot be undone from here. If you change your mind, ask the festival to invite you again — a fresh invitation is an ordinary new one, with its own deadline and its own terms.

The row stays on your list as Declined, forever.

Blocking a festival from here

Block this festival lives in the ⋯ menu at the top right of an invitation awaiting your answer — never beside Accept and Decline, because it is the destructive one. It is only offered while there is something to close.

Block the festival?

The festival cannot invite you again, and every invitation you have not answered from them closes without an answer.

Nothing is sent to the festival. Unblock from your account settings at any time, and festivals you already judge for are unaffected.

Exactly what happens:

1. That festival is added to your blocked list, the same list you can edit on your account. It can no longer invite you to anything, by any route.
2. Every invitation from that festival still awaiting your answer is declined — across all of its seasons, not only the one you were looking at. Rows you were not even looking at change status.
3. The festival cannot tell a block from an ordinary decline. The declines are written identically to the ones you make by hand, and since declining sends no email, there is no pattern of messages to read either. There is no screen, export or support answer anywhere that would tell them.
4. Nothing is sent to anybody.

Blocking a festival you already judge for changes nothing about that work. You stay on every roster you are on, you keep your queue, and your accepted invitations stay Accepted.

Blocking a festival with nothing pending still works — the block is the point, and the declines are housekeeping.

Blocking a festival you have already blocked does nothing, harmlessly.

What the Festival blocked pill actually is

It is not a fourth answer. Every declined invitation from a festival you currently block reads Festival blocked — including ones you declined by hand long before you blocked them.

Unblock the festival, on the Blocked festivals card of your account's Directory listing tab, save, and those rows go back to reading plain Declined. Nothing about them changed; the pill is drawn from your block list, live.

Blocking a festival elsewhere does not close anything. A block made on your account only stops the next invitation; the one that closes invitations you already hold is this one, made from an invitation itself.

Expired invitations

An invitation nobody answered before its deadline reads Expired, keeps its place in your list forever, and shows an em rule where its date was.

• You cannot accept or decline it, and neither can anyone else.
• Only the festival can reopen it, by inviting you again. That arrives as a new invitation with a new deadline and a new row — and possibly on different terms, since a second invitation replaces the first entirely.
• A season a festival took you off before you ever answered reads Expired too. It can no longer be answered, which is what Expired means here.
• An offer the festival revoked is a different case — it leaves the list entirely rather than reading Expired.

Invitation links last 14 days from the moment they are sent, which is what the deadline on your row is counting down.

If an answer is refused

Answering can fail, and the dialog stays open with the reason rather than closing on you:

The first message is deliberately incurious. It is what you get whether the invitation was answered from the emailed link a minute ago, whether its deadline passed while the dialog was open, or whether the festival withdrew it. Naming which would tell somebody with a guessed address something about real invitations.

An address that is not one of your invitations gives you "page not found" — an invitation belonging to somebody else, one that was withdrawn, and one that never existed all look exactly the same. You never get an empty screen with somebody else's festival named on it.

What else turns up on this list

Every place you hold on a season is here, not only the ones that arrived as an email. In particular:

• A season you joined by applying to an open call appears as Accepted, with an em rule for a deadline, because nobody sent you an invitation to answer. Its pay column reflects what you applied for — the Volunteer pill if you applied as a volunteer, and the figures you and the festival finally settled on if you negotiated.
• A season a festival took you off after you accepted still reads Accepted. This list is the record of the offer; where you stand at each festival today is on the Festivals tab of your account.
• An invitation from a festival you have never worked with is here from the moment it is sent, even though nothing else in FilmScorecard shows you that festival yet.

On a phone

The rows stay rows. The list scrolls sideways under a frozen heading row, with the Invitation column pinned to the left so you always know which invitation you are reading. The scroll region can be focused and moved with the keyboard.

The invitation's own page reflows to one column.

What this screen does not have

Named plainly so you do not go looking:

• No counter-offer on an invitation. There is no way to reply to one asking for different rates from any screen in FilmScorecard. Reply to the invitation email and ask them to invite you again. An open-call application is the other case — there you name your own figures, and you can answer a festival that replies with different ones. See Applying to an open call.
• No way to ask to be paid on an invitation that carries no pay, and no way to volunteer on one that does. Whether an invitation pays is the festival's decision when they send it; the one place you name your own terms is an open-call application.
• No note to the festival when you decline. There is no box for one.
• No archiving and no deleting. Every invitation you have ever had stays on the list.
• No paging. The whole list is on the one screen.
• No live updates. Counts and statuses move when you act on something or reload, not while you watch.
• Nothing about another judge, ever — including how many other people were invited to the same season, and including whether any of them is being paid.

Related guides

• Your judging invitation — the email, the link it carries, and answering without an account.
• Your inbox — the tab beside this one: announcements and notices.
• What an invitation pays — how the figures on your invitation were arrived at and why they stop moving once you accept.
• Applying to an open call — the other route onto a panel, and the one place you choose whether to be paid, name your own figures, and answer a festival that replies with different ones.
• Earnings — what the places you accepted come to afterwards, with a Volunteer tab for the ones that carry no pay.
• When a festival is unavailable — why an invitation can answer "This invitation is unavailable."