The event is open for everybody to join, there’s no formal sign-up. It’s hosted on both Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. If you share your creations here, too, after the work reveal, please tag us @gaxfest and #gax fest 2026 so we can see and reblog your posts.

FEST RULES

🦁 George Russell/Max Verstappen should be the main pairing. (There can be other pairings but the creation (story, drawing, GIF set, video etc.) has to focus on Gax.)

🐍 You can create any type of work, writing, art, GIF sets, podfics, videos, posters/edits, web-weaves, crafts, anything.

🦁 There’s no minimal wordcount or equivalent for any type of work. I want this to be a stress-free fest and I know a lot of people are tired/burnt out, so 100-word drabbles and quick sketches are also welcome here.

🐍 All chapters of multi-chapter stories must be finished by the deadline to ensure people can read the whole story and that it won't be left unfinished.

🦁 This is an AI free event. Please respect your fellow creators and do not bring any AI slop here. There’s no minimal word count (or equivalent) so that everybody can create something.

🐍 All ratings and themes are welcome but please tag appropriately.

🦁 Stories in languages other than English are welcome, but please only write them as a response to your own prompt because if you do it to someone else's, they might not understand it. (If you make something that has text on/in it in a language other than English, a comic or anything similar, please provide translation.)

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TIMELINE IN CET

🦌 Prompting opens: 20th November 2025

🐡 Prompting closes: 23:59 CET 13th January 2026

🦌 Work submission: 23:59 CET 21st February 2026

🐡 Work reveal: 14:00 CET 22nd February 2026

There'll be a comment bingo after the work reveal.

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PROMPTING

Rules and important information.

🐍 November 20th 2025 to January 13th 2026.

🦁 On the Ao3 collection.

🐍 You’re welcome to leave up to 10 prompts.

🦁 You do not need to fulfill a prompt to leave one.

🐍 Please claim “Open Prompt” to not fulfill a prompt but still participate.

🦁 One prompt can be claimed multiple times.

🐍 Please only claim as many as you’re ready to fulfill.

🦁 While every prompt can be claimed by any type of artists not only writers, I encourage you to prompt art/poster/GIF set or any other ideas as well for those who’d like to create something other than stories.

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I don't want this profile to be dead during prompting so I'll reblog prompt ideas every once in a while to inspire you to create. 😊

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Initially, I wanted there to be a tag for the Gax Summer 2026 on Ao3 you have to add to the story/creation when posting, but getting a tag canonized (to show up in the list when you add it to the tags, to make adding it easier) is far more difficult than making a collection on Ao3.

So the Gax Summer 2026 will also have a collection, just like the Gax Fest does. The difference will be that only the prompts from the prompt list will be there, you won't be able to add other prompts, only to fulfill the ones I add there.

To make it easy, there will be 14 prompts, each of them having all three prompts of the day, so no matter which one of those three you'll be fulfilling, you have to choose the prompt of the day and just specify the chosen prompt itself in the notes.

For example, if you want to fulfill one of the day 2 prompts, you'll have to submit your creation to the day 2 prompt and specify (in the notes) which of the three prompts of that day you created for.

On Tumblr the posting will require adding the day and the prompt somewhere at the beginning of the post, and adding the Gax Summer 2026 tag in the tags.

i know you said the spotlight was on short stories and other "quick" art/edit etc, but getting more time would mean people have time to engage with more than one prompt surely?

(also very selfishly i'm an extremely slow writer and i'm not sure i can write even a one-shot in just two weeks 🫣)

thank you for your consideration!

Hi,

I'm also a slow writer (so slow I can't even write for deadlines – no surprise I never participate with written things), so I get that more time would be better.

I can give one more week, but I really don't want people to start writing multi-chapter fics they then don't/can't finish. I want this to be about (a few hundred words long) short stories (and other creations) people post on Tumblr as ask replies or just as random thoughts they wanted to talk about but then turned into a story.

Hi,

If you scroll back on the fest profile you can find everything. 😊

What's the next event?

When is it?

Did I miss the prompting?

Hi,

The Gax Summer will have a prompt list of 42 prompts, 3 for each 14 days of the fest. The list will be published two weeks before the Gax Summer starts so that the people can start preparing if they want. The Gax Summer focuses on short stories/sketches/edits/any kind of art everyday for two weeks.

Anybody can participate in it, no matter if they sent a prompt. I asked people to send some because I wanted them to be involved in the process and have prompts they like and/or want to create for. So don't worry, you're free to participate even if you didn't send a prompt. 😊

There are 14 spots left, so I can still write the favorite trope/tag or niche kink of 14 of you guys on it, just send it to me in an ask.

(I'll start actually editing it sometime after waking up – it's 2:42 AM here and I'm still awake so we'll see. 😶)

Hi,

You didn't miss anything. If you look closely, you'll see after the post about the previous fest notification e-mails thing that those are future dates for the Gax Summer 2026, and in the first poll post I explain what it is. It's not another Gax Fest.

There's no collection for this on Ao3, currently the plan is that this will work differently.

In general you can submit prompts to fests after signing up to the fest, same goes for claiming. You can usually sign up by clicking on the link leading to the fest collection on Ao3, and then clicking on the “Sign-up” button on the fest profile.

There are usually “Prompts”, “My Prompts” and “My Claims” buttons in fest collections that are based on prompts and responses to them. In the “My Prompts” there's a button called “Add Prompt”, that's where you can add prompts. And in the “Prompts” section you can claim them by clicking on the “Claim” button, then those claimed prompts will show up at “My Claims.”

I feel like this means you didn't get e-mails about the responses to your prompts during the reveal. If I'm right, I'm really sorry about it, I'm still trying to figure out how to do this properly and I didn't know there was a button to reveal the whole collection with one click and not story-by-story like how I did.

I'm sorry if I ruined the experience. 😞