Holiday Design Contest

We are calling on all artists, builders, and community members to design our official 2026 End-of-Year Holiday card and sticker. Winning designs will be printed and mailed directly to Interledger Members across the globe in December! Submissions are open from October 22 - November 13.

Your Creative Brief

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design an end-of-year card and/or sticker that puts your own spin on Interledger Community. Celebrate the connections we’ve made, the things we’ve built together, or the possibilities ahead. 

Make it clever, funny, cute, heartfelt, wonderfully nerdy, or something no one has thought of yet.

We’ve packed a creative toolkit with templates, colors, illustrations and graphic elements to help you get inspired, although we encourage you to take the design in your own direction. You can choose any medium to create your designs: digital, painted, photography, hand-printed, the list goes on… Just make something you’d be proud to share, send, or stick on your laptop.

To ensure inclusive holiday messaging across global cultures, all submissions must align with an inclusive “end of year” theme (e.g., no Christmas-specific imagery) and should be aligned with our community mission of advancing open payment infrastructure and financial inclusion. 

• Theme ideas: Connectedness, open technology, new beginnings, global nodes
• Designs should focus on global reflection, gratitude, community, and looking forward to the new year.
• Exclusions: Avoid specific religious-only imagery to ensure the designs are inclusive across cultures, holidays, and secular celebrations worldwide.

Design Kit & References

Need inspiration? Check out our Design Kit below, created by our team, featuring sample compositions and color inspiration. Feel free to use these components in your design, but don’t feel limited by them either!

Official Competition Rules & Policies

Eligibility

The contest is open to anyone in the community however, only registered Members are eligible to vote and receive the physical sticker and card. If you haven’t already joined the Membership, fill out this Membership sign-up form (opens in a new tab). Only registered Members who provide their address will receive the mailed sticker and card.

AI Usage Policy

In alignment with the Interledger Foundation AI Policies:

• Permitted Support: AI tools (e.g., Midjourney, DALL-E, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT) are permitted as support tools for brainstorming, concept drafting, design creation, or refining ideas.
• Value on Originality: We value creative thinking and original artistic vision. Submissions relying primarily or entirely on unedited generative AI outputs will be accepted, but evaluated negatively against original human artwork.
• Mandatory Disclosure: Every submission must include a brief disclosure stating whether AI tools were used, which tools were employed, and how they contributed to the final piece (e.g., initial ideation vs. final asset generation).

Intellectual Property & Printing Rights

By submitting a design, participants grant the Interledger Foundation full permission to print, reproduce, and distribute the submitted artwork for holiday campaign mailers and promotional materials.

• Ownership: Submitting artists retain full ownership and copyright of their original creative assets.
• Licensing: By entering, participants grant the Interledger Foundation a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to reproduce, print, distribute, and display the submitted designs in physical mailings, digital assets, and promotional media.
• Open Distribution: Final selected designs will be shared under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license with full artist attribution.

Judging Criteria & Selection Process

Submissions will be evaluated through a two-stage selection process.

Stage 1: Internal Screening

We will review all eligible entries and select 5-10 finalists per category based on the following rubric:

Stage 2: Community Voting

• The top 5-10 finalist designs in each category will be published for public community voting.
• Voting will open on November 17 and close on November 23.
• Community members will vote via email form.