FACTS OFF26

OFF – Odense International Film Festival started in 1975, which makes it Denmark’s oldest film festival, and Denmark’s only short film festival that qualifies for both Academy Award, BAFTA, the EFA Award and the Danish Robert Award.
OFF is located in Odense – in the heart of Denmark. The festival is held every year in the last week of August – this year from the 24th of August to the 30st of August. Filmmakers from Denmark and all over the world, industry guests and local film lovers all celebrate short films at OFF.
An astounding number of 4092 short films have been submitted to OFF26. 164 short films have been selected for this years’ competition program plus 30 music videos for our new music video competition.
All in all, 49 different countries are represented in the competition programs.
The selection jury members are animator Sara Koppel, screenwriter Christian Gamst Miller-Harris and member of the council for Shorts and Documentaries, Birgitte Weinberger.
The selected films will be shown in venues in Odense and for two weeks on our streaming service, OFFstream.dk. OFFstream will be geo-blocked and limited to streaming in Denmark and all films will be password protected behind a paywall.

The competition program for OFF26 consists of four central competitions: the International Competition, the Danish Competition, the Animation Competition and the Documentary Competition. All four competitions are Academy Award-qualifying.
In addition to the four central competitions, OFF has a Youth Competition, a Danish pitching contest called “Pitch Me Baby” and in 2026 OFF introduced a Music Video Competition.
At the end of the festival, OFF presents an Audience Award for the short film in competition that receives the most audience votes during the festival, and a Youth Audience Award for the short film in the Youth Competition that receives the most audience votes.
OFF is an EFA-Qualifying short film festival. This means that one eligible film from the International Competition will be given the chance to compete for a European Film Award.
In 2024, OFF became BAFTA-qualifying, meaning that eligible British films selected to OFF’s program may also compete for a BAFTA Award.
Danish films selected to OFF are eligible for the Danish Robert Award for Best Short Film.