A calendar you can trust with your deadlines

Underwater photographers plan their year around contest deadlines — and the lists out there are stale blog posts with last year's dates, or general photo-contest aggregators where underwater is an afterthought. This site is a single, maintained reference: every contest with a genuine underwater category, its deadlines, fees, rules and image-rights terms, verified against official sources.

How the data is researched

Each contest is researched from the organiser's own pages first — the contest site, the rules and terms, the entry platform — and only then from dive magazines or press coverage to fill gaps. Every edition lists the sources it was built from, with the date each was accessed, and shows when it was last verified. Every change is checked by an automated validator that rejects inconsistent data — a deadline before the opening date, a timezone offset that doesn't match the organiser's timezone, overlapping editions, missing sources.

We never fill a gap with a guess. If a fee, date or rule can't be verified, we leave it blank and say so — an honest gap is better than a wrong deadline. Entries not re-verified for 90 days are flagged as due for re-verification.

Dates and timezones

Deadlines are stored in the organiser's own timezone and shown in yours. Hover or tap a date to see the organiser's original time. When an organiser gives only a date, we treat the deadline as 23:59 on that day in their timezone — but if it matters, submit a day early.

What the statuses mean

• Opens soonThe organiser has announced dates but entries aren't open yet.
• OpenTaking entries.
• Closing soonTaking entries, with 14 days or less to go.
• JudgingEntries are closed and results haven't been published.
• Results outWinners have been announced — we link to the official results.
• ExpectedThe next edition hasn't been announced; dates are projected from the previous one.

Expected dates are our projection, not an announcement: we take the previous edition's real dates and roll them forward one cycle. They're shown loosely ("early January 2027"), drawn with dashed lines on the calendar, and replaced with confirmed dates as soon as the organiser publishes them.

The image-rights badge

When you enter a contest you grant the organiser a licence to use your images. We summarise each licence in plain words and compute a badge from it with a fixed rule — the badge is never assigned by hand:

• Photographer-friendlyPhotographer-friendly: use is limited to promoting the contest, there is no commercial use by the organiser, and credit is promised.
• Standard licenceStandard: everything in between — typically a broad non-exclusive licence for marketing without commercial resale.
• Read carefullyRead carefully: the entrant grants an exclusive licence or transfers rights, or the organiser may use entries commercially (sell, license, use in paid products).

Our summaries are not legal advice. Always read the official terms before you enter.

Images

We don't reproduce contest logos or winning images — they belong to their photographers and organisers. Each contest gets a generated mark instead, and we link to the official results galleries.

Suggest a contest or a correction

Know a contest we're missing, or spotted a date that's changed? Email hello@underwaterphotocontests.com with a link to the official page. Organisers are welcome to write in too.