love overgrows a rock

Why should I nominate?
To create the pool of fandoms available for this year’s Yuletide. More at AO3.

What can I nominate?
Up to 5 rare fandoms and 4 characters you want to request or offer. See what’s eligible here.

When can I nominate?
From now until 26 September, at 9pm UTC. Please check the date and time in your own timezone! Until then, you can also edit your nominations.

Where can I nominate?
Tag set.

Who can nominate?
People with AO3 accounts who intend to take part in Yuletide. You may use only one account for nominations. If you don’t have an AO3 account, add yourself immediately to the invite queue or email the mods.

How do I nominate?
First, check what's eligible. Then go to the tag set on AO3, and make sure you're logged in. Click "Nominate" at top right, enter your fandom and character choices, and click Submit at the bottom. Check the results on the page to make sure you entered them correctly. You don't have to submit all your choices at once - you can change your mind and add or edit your nominations until nominations close.

If you need to explain or argue for your fandom, please make a case for it on the Evidence Post as well as nominating on AO3.

Do I have to use fandom tags that exist on AO3?
Please do, unless:

• There is no tag for your fandom (it's totally okay to nominate something with no fic!). Make one up, following this guide.


• The tag that exists on the Archive describes a larger fandom with many parts and your fandom is one distinct part or subset. In this case, instead of using the tag that exists already, please use a tag that describes your specific subfandom.


• The tag that exists on the Archive has the words 'All Media Types' or '& Related Fandoms' in it. Please don't use a label that includes those words without arguing for it on the Evidence Post
.

Please label fandoms according to the Archive's wrangling style. If you’re not sure how to label your fandom, please ask.

When will I see what was nominated?
Not for a while, sorry! You can share what you've nominated and coordinate with other participants at yuletide. Moderators will approve tags starting approximately 28 September, and will release the tagset in early October. We will post questions about nominations between now and sign-ups, so please keep an eye on this community.

The Additional Tags at the bottom of the tag set are a new feature from 2023. Here is a post explaining how they work and some background (1, 2).

Disambiguation
When a character name could appear in more than one fandom, or is common, or short, please put information in brackets after the name to show where it belongs. For example:
-Bonnie Parker (Bonnie and Clyde 1967)
-Robin Hood (Prince of Thieves)
-Tulku (The Shadow 1994)
-Leonardo da Vinci (Da Vinci's Demons)

Disambiguation will also solve your problems if you receive the error message: “This character was rejected because it was nominated in another fandom.” If that happens, add more information to the name and resubmit.

Worldbuilding "character"
In most fandoms, you may nominate worldbulding as a character tag, in the format Worldbuilding (Your Fandom Name). However, mods will not accept "worldbuilding" nominations for RPF fandoms or where it is nominated without explanation for a purely mundane canon - there should be a clear fictional element to worldbuild around. See 2021's discussion post about worldbuilding; you may also find recent requests helpful to see how people have used this option.

Other character tips
If you submit a character that is new or rarely used on AO3, a suggestion from AO3 may appear in bold and in brackets next to your nomination after it has been submitted. This is okay, and does not mean that your nomination will be automatically changed. However, if you don't have any disambiguation information in brackets after the name, you may want to add it, because there may be another character with that name. Even if your character has two names, such as “Harrison Chase” or “Elizabeth Burke”, that name may appear in multiple unrelated fandoms.

RPF and Anthropomorphic fandoms must be nominated with characters. Other fandoms will be approved without characters if none are nominated.

Superhero and similar names may belong to more than one character. For example, Batman’s Robin could mean Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, or Stephanie Brown, among others. Please make sure it’s clear which one you mean - in cases where it’s ambiguous, please use their “wallet” name.

We don’t accept group nominations if the group contains named, distinct characters (for example, under Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, we wouldn’t accept The Five Gods as a character). However, we will allow distinct groups that do not contain individual, named characters. If it may be difficult for us to determine whether this applies to your nomination, please comment in the Evidence post.

Check your nominations!
After submitting, check that your nominations have gone through: click away from the tag set, click back, and, if still logged into the same account, you should be able to see "My Nominations" at top right. Check the spelling and formatting! You can edit your nominations until the nominations period ends.

Enjoy!

PS: as pre-approved nominations can only be seen by mods, consider discussing your nominations with other participants on yuletide or at the Discord. In particular, please see this year's RPF discussion post.


Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
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Yuletide 2025 nominations begin on September 15 and end at 9 PM UTC on 26 September. See what can be nominated on the eligibility post. You can brainstorm, coordinate, and promote your fandoms at the participant community on DW.

Some fandoms need evidence to be approved. Comment on this post if:

• The fandom you are nominating has too many stories to be eligible, but only because a tiny pool of authors has written most of it, OR because a significant majority are unrelated but tagged as crossovers, OR because a significant majority tagged as 'English' aren't in English


• The fandom you are nominating appears on AO3 as part of a larger “umbrella” fandom, but you can clearly show that the fics for your fandom are under the limit


• The fandom you are nominating is a fanwork (please include a link to the creator’s permissions statement and also describe how the fanwork is distinct from its source fandom)


• The fandom you are nominating is an original work shared on a fan archive (please include a link to the creator’s permissions statement)


• The fandom you are nominating is a social media post (please check RPF restrictions), headline, meme, or other “ephemeral” canon (please include the URL for the canon)


• The fandom you are nominating includes a Worldbuilding nomination for an RPF or other real-world fandom


• The fandom you are nominating includes the words “All Media Types” or “and Related Fandoms” and you believe you need to use that label


• The fandom you are nominating is closely related to another fandom, especially if the other fandom is ineligible (ex: a Star Wars cartoon or tie-in novel, a prequel to a popular book series, or an audio drama sequel of an ineligible TV show)


• The fandom you are nominating does not yet exist on AO3 and is hard to google (very common name, few sources in English, etc). Note: Most new fandoms do not need evidence.

Mods will not consider the following evidence:

• Use of original characters


• Crossovers


• Fic quality


• Ambiguous endings in stories that are marked 'complete'


• Mistagging, wrong language, or not-many-authors evidence for fandoms that appear to have 1100+ eligible works on AO3. If you believe your fandom should be an exception, talk to the mods directly before commenting with evidence

If your fandom is one of these cases, you must leave evidence this year even if the fandom has been approved in the past. Otherwise, mods may reject the fandom if it’s nominated without evidence.

You must submit evidence before nominations close at 9 PM UTC on 26 September. It may take us some time to review and respond to your post, so if your nomination slots depend on our response, we recommend posting your evidence as early as possible!

Please put the fandom name in the subject line of your comment as well as inside your comment.

Suggested template:
<b>Fandom</b>:
<b>Possible issue with the fandom</b>:
<b>Why this fandom should be considered eligible</b>:
<b>Link to source (ephemeral fandoms, fanworks, and original works on fan archives)</b>:
<b>Link to creator's permissions statement (fanworks and original works on fan archives)</b>:

You are welcome to link to documents containing your evidence, if your post is long.

You can use bookmarklets for checking how many of your fandom’s works on AO3 are in English, complete, and over 1,000 words long, for any rating.

If your fandom appears too big before you use those filters, and is easily under 1,000 works after you apply the filters, then you don't need to tell us about it.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.