Your judging invitation

A festival has asked you to judge one of its seasons, and emailed you a link. This page covers what that email is, what it tells you about money, what saying yes and saying no each involve, what to do when the link has stopped working, and what you see afterwards.

You do not need to sign up for anything. The festival created your place on its panel when it invited you; the link in the email is enough on its own.

There is now a second way in. If you already have a FilmScorecard account and your judge profile is set up (accepting an invitation sets it up), every invitation you hold is also listed inside the app, on the Invitations tab of your inbox — with the same figures and the same Accept and Decline. You do not need the email at all, and a link that has stopped working is no longer the end of the matter. That screen has its own guide: Your invitations.

The email

The subject is "You have been invited to judge the festival and season" — for example "You have been invited to judge Northern Lights Film Festival Spring 2026" — and the message is short. It opens with the festival's name, shows the season's judging window when the festival has set both of its dates, and ends with a short note about FilmScorecard. Its text reads:

You have been invited to judge Northern Lights Film Festival Spring 2026.

Your role: Creative judge and Technical reviewer.

Accept or decline here: a link

This invitation expires in 14 days. If you were not expecting it, you can ignore this message.

Three things worth knowing straight away:

• The link works once. Accepting or declining uses it up — and so does answering the same invitation from the Invitations tab. One invitation, one answer, whichever route you take.
• It lasts 14 days from the moment it was sent.
• If the festival sends you a new invitation, the older link stops working. Always use the newest email.

Ignoring the message is a real option. Nothing happens to you if you never open it, and nothing is assigned to somebody who has not accepted. The invitation still sits on your Invitations tab, with an amber count on your Inbox row, until you answer it or its deadline passes.

When the invitation names money

Most invitations do, and then the email has one or two extra blocks in the middle:

Your role: Creative judge and Technical reviewer.

Compensation, paid by the festival directly: Technical: $4.00 to $12.00 per scorecard filed Creative: $6.00 per scorecard filed Paid 30 days after invoice.

A note from the festival: We loved your work on the shorts panel last year.

Accept or decline here: a link

• You are paid per scorecard you file, not per film and not a flat fee for the season.
• There is one line for each kind of scorecard you were asked to file. A creative judge sees one line; somebody asked to do both sees two.
• A range means the festival pays different amounts for different categories — $4.00 to $12.00 is the lowest and the highest of them, never a total. A single figure means every category you were offered pays the same.
• The exact figure for every category is on the page the link opens, and on the same invitation inside the app. The email keeps it short on purpose.
• The last line is the festival's payment terms — "Paid 30 days after invoice", or "Paid on the 1st of the month" — when the festival has set them. With none set the line is simply not there.
• "Paid by the festival directly" means FilmScorecard does not pay judges. The festival pays you itself, as the Judge Code of Conduct you agree to when you accept also says.
• "Compensation: none. You are invited on a volunteer basis and no payout is created." is the wording when the festival is asking you to volunteer. See When an invitation asks you to volunteer.
• A note only appears when somebody wrote one. It is written by the person inviting you, at the festival. It is in this email and on the invitation's page inside the app — but not on the page the emailed link opens.
• An invitation with no compensation block at all is unusual but possible. It means the festival's season had no submission categories set up when they invited you, which also means there is nothing for you to be given yet. Ask them before you accept.

See What this festival is offering before you read too much into any figure.

When an invitation asks you to volunteer

The compensation block is then one line — "Compensation: none. You are invited on a volunteer basis and no payout is created." — and there are no figures anywhere in the message or on the page the link opens.

It is a fact about this invitation, not about the festival. A festival can pay some of its judges and invite others as volunteers on the same season, so "you are invited on a volunteer basis" does not mean the panel is unpaid and does not mean the festival pays nobody.

You are not told which it is, and there is no screen anywhere that would tell you. Nothing on FilmScorecard shows a judge what another judge agreed to.

What you can do about it is what you can do about any figure: decline, or reply to the email and ask them to invite you again on other terms. A fresh invitation replaces this one entirely — its rates, and whether it pays at all. What you cannot do is accept it and be paid; once you accept, the terms are fixed for that season.

What the link opens

A page headed You have been invited to judge, with the festival and season underneath, and then the details in full:

Under those rows sits a block headed What this festival is offering — a table of every submission category you were invited to work, with both rates on each row, or "Volunteer — no payout" when this invitation carries no money.

The festival's note to you is not repeated on this page. It is in the email, and it is on the same invitation inside the app, under "Note from the festival" — so if you have an account, you have not lost it even if you deleted the message.

Then 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 — then two buttons, Accept invitation and Decline, and one line underneath: "Accepting signs you in as your address. Declining takes one click and needs no account."

What this festival is offering

The table is the exact offer, category by category:

with one line under it: "Per scorecard filed, paid by the festival directly." — and, when the festival has set payment terms, a second: "Paid 30 days after invoice", say.

How to read it:

• Every figure is what one scorecard is worth. File a creative scorecard on a Drama Film submission and that scorecard is worth $16.00.
• Both columns are always shown, even for a kind of scorecard you were not asked to file. If your role is Creative judge only, the Technical column is not money you will earn — the roles row above the table is what says which applies to you.
• Nothing on the page is a total. The two columns are alternatives on different scorecards, and how many submissions you will actually be given is not decided yet.
• The categories listed are the ones you may be given work from. If a category you expected is missing, ask before you accept.
• These figures are yours. This offer belongs to this one invitation, and another judge on the same season may have been offered something different — or nothing at all, if the festival invited them as a volunteer.

It is the same table on the Invitations tab, deliberately — the two renderings of one offer are the same component reading the same figures, so they cannot disagree.

On a volunteer invitation the table is replaced by "Volunteer — no payout" and "You are invited on a volunteer basis and no payout is created." That is the whole of it: they are asking you to work unpaid and the invitation is honest about it up front. It reads exactly the same whether the festival pays its other judges or nobody at all — see When an invitation asks you to volunteer.

If the table says "This invitation does not name any submission categories yet", the festival has not set its season up. Accept and Decline both still work, but there would be nothing to give you. Ask them what you would be scoring first.

Four things everybody should know:

• Nothing has been paid, and FilmScorecard will not pay it. The festival pays you itself, directly — that is what the line under the table, the Judge Code of Conduct and the festival's own agreement with FilmScorecard all say. The figures are a written record of what was offered, and once you have approved work you can send the festival an invoice from your pay statement.
• You are not shown what the festival pays in general, only what it is offering you. There is no way to compare, and no way to find out what anybody else on that panel agreed.
• Accepting is not signing a contract. It puts you on the panel. Anything about invoices, timing or terms is between you and the festival.
• You can say no, or say "not at those rates". Decline, or reply to the email — replies reach the festival directly whenever it has given FilmScorecard a support address — and ask them to invite you again at different figures. A fresh invitation replaces the old one, rates included. There is no way to reply with a counter-offer from either invitation screen; asking in a reply is how it is done today. The one place a judge names their own terms is an open-call application — see Applying to an open call.

Once you accept, the terms are fixed. Nobody at the festival can change what you are paid for that season afterwards — or turn a volunteer place into a paid one, or the other way about — not by editing their own settings, and not by any screen they have. A fresh invitation to that season is the only route, and it makes new terms you read before agreeing to them.

No other judge's offer is ever shown to you, and yours is not shown to them.

The two roles

The invitation names one or both of these. They describe what you will be asked to do once the festival starts sending work out:

• Creative judge — you score submissions on the festival's creative scorecard.
• Technical reviewer — you score submissions on its technical scorecard.

Both of them are scoring roles, and both are paid per scorecard filed wherever an invitation names money. There is no judging role that reviews other people's work: at a festival, the person who reads and approves what judges file is a member of the festival's own staff, not somebody on the judging panel.

Neither role decides whether you are paid. That is a property of the invitation itself, so being asked to file both kinds of scorecard on a volunteer invitation still carries no payout.

An older invitation may have named a third role, Coordinator. It has been retired. If you accepted one and were expecting to review other judges' work, that never came with it — ask the festival to give you staff access instead.

If the roles look wrong, say so to the festival before you accept. They can change them at any time, and they can send you a fresh invitation with different ones. Changing your roles afterwards does not change your rates — every category on your invitation already names both figures, so being given the other scorecard type later pays you the figure that was in the table you read.

Your roles are named in the email and on the page the link opens, and nowhere else. The Invitations tab does not repeat them. Keep the email, or ask.

Accepting

Tick I agree to the Judge Code of Conduct, then choose Accept invitation. If you are already signed in as the invited address, the festival's list shows you as active straight away, and you are taken straight to your judging home.

The box is part of the same press. Accepting with it unticked does nothing but put one sentence under it: "You need to agree to the Judge Code of Conduct to continue." Ticking it records your agreement to the current version of the document with your account — once, not once per festival. What it asks of you is in The Terms, the Privacy Policy and the two role agreements. Declining never asks for it.

You do not have to set up a judge profile. The festival chose you, and nothing about the judging you were invited to do depends on it. Until your profile says what you judge, a Complete your profile card sits at the top of your judging home. It links to the profile steps, and what you fill in there is what other festivals see when they look for judges to invite. Dismiss hides the card in this browser. Once your formats, genres and name are filled in, the card stops appearing.

Accepting now emails the festival. Whoever holds access to that season is told that you took the offer — it is the one answer that sends anything. See What the festival is told.

If you are not signed in

Pressing Accept invitation — with the box ticked — does not send you anywhere yet. The page keeps the invitation in front of you and offers two doors in place of the button — Create an account and Log in — under the line "Sign in or create an account to accept. You will come straight back here." The agreement box goes while the doors are showing. Decline stays where it was, because declining needs no account.

When you come back, what happens depends on the Judge Code of Conduct.

• If your account has already agreed to its current version — you judge for another festival and agreed there, say — the acceptance finishes itself. You signed up or logged in in order to accept, so when you land back on the invitation the page accepts it for you: the buttons show as busy for a moment and then you are on your judging home. There is nothing to press a second time.
• If it has not — which includes every brand-new account — you land back on the invitation with the box unticked and nothing accepted. Tick it and press Accept invitation once more. Your tick before the door is not carried through it: an agreement is made by the account that holds it.

(If you abandoned the door part way and reopened the link later, you are simply shown the box and the button again.)

Accepting needs an account on the invited address, because accepting is what attaches this panel place to an account. Most invited judges already have one — you have one if you have sent in a submission to a FilmScorecard festival, judged for one before, or been given festival staff access, all with that same address — and Log in is the door for them.

If that address has never been used on FilmScorecard at all, Create an account is the door, and three things about it:

• Go through it rather than around it. Signing up is in a private beta and turns away addresses that have not been approved — but an invitation goes around that entirely, and it is arriving from this page that tells the sign-up screen you hold one. Typing the sign-up address in yourself does not. See Creating an account.
• It has to be the invited address. Sign up with a different one and the invitation stays out of reach — see the next section.
• It asks for two things the invitation did not. Your first and last name, and a tick in the box that agrees to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy; the role question is skipped, because the invitation has answered it. See The Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy.

If you are signed in as somebody else

Nothing happens, and an amber line tells you why:

This invitation was sent to [email protected]. Sign in as that address to accept.

Nothing was changed and the link is not used up. Sign out, sign back in as that address, and open the link again. This is what stops a forwarded invitation from being taken up by whoever it was forwarded to.

One case where the app is more forgiving than the link. If you were invited at an old address, went through judge setup on it, and then changed the address you sign in with, the link will keep refusing you — but the invitation is on your Invitations tab and you can answer it there. FilmScorecard remembers that the old address is yours; the link cannot, because a link is forwardable and your account is not.

If the invitation is unavailable

Pressing Accept invitation — or landing back on the page after logging in to accept — can replace the buttons with one heading:

This invitation is unavailable.

The festival that invited you is unavailable on FilmScorecard at the moment, so nobody can join it. Nothing happened, and the link is not used up. Reload the page and Decline is there again; Accept invitation works once the festival is available again, as long as the link's 14 days have not run out. The same invitation on your Invitations tab gives the same answer. See When a festival is unavailable.

Declining

Choose Decline. It takes one click, it needs no account, and you do not have to sign in for it. The page replaces itself with:

You have declined this invitation

The festival has been told. Nothing has been assigned to you and this link will not work again. If you change your mind, ask them to invite you again.

Declining is recorded on the festival's list straight away, so it is a real answer rather than silence — and it is worth giving. If you change your mind, the festival can invite you again and you get a fresh link, with fresh terms if they are willing to change them.

No email goes out when you decline. The page's "The festival has been told" means the answer is on their screen the next time they look — nothing is sent to anybody. The same is true of declining from the Invitations tab, and of blocking a festival.

What the festival is told

If the festival withdraws the invitation

A festival can take an offer back before you have answered it. When they do, you get an email:

Your invitation to the festival has been withdrawn

The festival has withdrawn its invitation to judge the season.

The offer is no longer acceptable and no payout is created. Any link you were sent for it will say the same.

If whoever withdrew it wrote you a note, it is quoted underneath, headed "A note from the festival:".

• The link in the earlier email stops working and shows the page in When the link no longer works.
• It leaves your Invitations tab as well. A withdrawn offer is not listed, and its address gives "page not found" — the same answer as an invitation that never existed.
• Nothing is owed to you and nothing was assigned to you. No payout obligation is created by an invitation you never accepted.
• Nothing is wrong with your account. You keep it, and you keep any other season you judge.
• They can invite you again later, and a fresh invitation is an ordinary new one with its own link and its own terms. Withdrawing and re-inviting is also how a festival moves an offer between paid and volunteer, so a second invitation to the same season may not say what the first one did — read it rather than assuming.

There is nothing for you to do, and nothing to answer. If you were expecting to judge that season, reply to the email and ask.

When the link no longer works

You get a page headed This invitation link is no longer valid:

It may have expired, or it may already have been accepted or declined. Invitation links are single-use and last 14 days.

Ask the festival that invited you to send a new one. Nothing has changed on your account.

If the link opened normally and it was pressing Accept invitation or Decline that failed, the same news arrives in slightly different words:

This invitation is no longer acceptable

It may have expired, it may already have been answered, or the festival may have withdrawn it. Ask the festival that invited you to send a new one.

FilmScorecard deliberately does not say which of those it was. The same page appears for a link that has expired, one that has already been answered, one the festival has withdrawn — by taking you off the season or by revoking the offer — and one that was mistyped or truncated by an email program. Naming which would let a stranger with a guessed link learn something about real invitations.

What to do:

1. Sign in and open your Invitations tab. If the invitation is still answerable, it is there and it will say so — this is the first thing to try, and it costs nothing.
2. Check you opened the newest email. A resent invitation, and any revised offer, replaces the earlier one.
3. Check the whole link came through. Some mail apps break long links across lines — copy the whole thing into the address bar.
4. Ask the festival to send a new one. That takes them one click.

You never get a "page not found" here. Whatever the link says, it opens something that explains itself.

Where you land afterwards

Once you have accepted, FilmScorecard's signed-in home for you is /judge. If judging is your only connection to FilmScorecard, logging in takes you straight there.

Accepting an invitation counts as setting up your judge profile, so you are never sent through the profile steps on the way in. The Complete your profile card is how you reach them if you want to. See Setting up your judge profile.

It is not a list of your seasons. /judge sends you straight into one festival's judging screen — the one you last worked in, or the season you accepted most recently — where one film at a time is put in front of you, with your other festivals down the side to switch between. That screen has its own guide: Your judging home.

If no festival has you on a season as an active judge, you stay on /judge and get one card instead: "No festival has assigned you films yet", with "Invitations arrive by email. Check the inbox for the address you signed up with."

That last line is now out of date, and the card still says it. Invitations do arrive by email, but they are also waiting on your Invitations tab — look there first.

That same card is what you see if the festival has paused you, removed you, or you have not accepted an invitation yet — the screen does not say which, and it does not say "you are paused". Ask the festival; only they can see and change your status.

Things the judging screen does not show, so you are not left looking for them:

• Your roles. The invitation email and the invitation page name them; no other screen does.
• Your rates. The invitation email names ranges, and the full per-category breakdown is on your Invitations tab, which keeps every offer you ever accepted. What each scorecard you filed was actually worth is on Earnings, one row per approved scorecard — and a place you hold as a volunteer is counted there too, on its Volunteer tab, with no money against it.
• Your profile. The Complete your profile card links to it until your formats, genres and name are filled in. After that, nothing does: reach it by opening /onboarding — see Changing your answers.
• Sign out. There is no sign-out control on the judging screen in this release.
• Any other judge. Judges never see each other's scores, identities, how many judges a film already has, or what anybody else is being paid — including whether anybody else on your panel is being paid at all. That is how the platform works and the festival cannot switch it off.
• A season you declined, or were removed from. Neither is reachable as a judging screen — but the record of it is yours now: every invitation you ever had, answered or not, stays on your Invitations tab, and where you stand at each festival today is on the Festivals tab of your account.

Questions this page cannot answer

Deadlines, what you will be asked to score, how many films, whether your name appears anywhere, when and how the rates you were offered are actually paid — all of those belong to the festival that invited you, not to FilmScorecard. Reply to whoever told you the invitation was coming. Why one invitation pays and another does not is one of those questions: only the festival can answer it.

FilmScorecard support, through the Contact link at the foot of any log-in screen (see Contacting us), can help with getting into your account and nothing else.

Related guides

• Your invitations — the in-app list of every offer you hold, and answering without the email.
• What an invitation pays — where the figures on your invitation came from and why they stop moving once you accept.
• Applying to an open call — the other way onto a panel, and the one place you choose your own terms.
• Earnings — what your filed work came to afterwards, festival by festival, with a Volunteer tab for the places that carry no pay.
• Setting up your judge profile — the four screens after you accept for the first time.
• When a festival is unavailable — what "This invitation is unavailable." means, and what else changes while it lasts.