🏆 Design Contest 2025: Results

🧠 Our most challenging Design Contest to date turned out to be a great success. This time, designers faced the complex task of crafting not just a standalone feature, but the foundation of an entirely new way to communicate on Telegram – and to manage that flow.

🌈 It was truly rewarding to come across so many gems out of 192 submissions – thank you. We spent more than a hundred hours reviewing each one, and dozens more discussing the ideas that stood out.

With so many strong concepts in play, none decisively outperformed the others – so no one secured 1st place.

💰 As a token of recognition of the effort participants put in, we are boosting the total prize fund from the initial $50,000 to $75,500 – an increase of over 50%.

Now finally, meet the winners!

2nd PLACE – $5,000
🥈 Sexy Leopard | Channel
🥈 Brave Flamingo | Channel
🥈 Strict Crow | Channel
🥈 Desert Bass | Channel
🥈 Cuddly Turtle | Channel
🥈 Humble Cockroach | Channel
🥈 Merry Bat | Channel

3rd PLACE – $2,000
🥉 Eager Duck | Channel
🥉 Nimble Kitten | Channel
🥉 Mighty Crab | Channel
🥉 Eager Mantis | Channel
🥉 Sunny Mink | Channel
🥉 Caring Eagle | Channel
🥉 Shiny Fish | Channel
🥉 Gifted Puma | Channel
🥉 Nimble Sheep | Channel
🥉 Crazy Gnat | Channel
🥉 Mighty Falcon | Channel
🥉 Noble Swallow | Channel

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4th PLACE – $750
🎖 Cute Lemur | Channel
🎖 Bold Fish | Channel
🎖 Magic Gorilla | Channel
🎖 Fit Tapir | Channel
🎖 Classy Skunk | Channel
🎖 Kooky Crow | Channel
🎖 Witty Fox | Channel
🎖 Slim Giraffe | Channel
🎖 Sweet Flamingo | Channel
🎖 Noble Ant | Channel
🎖 Sweet Duck | Channel
🎖 Brave Chicken | Channel
🎖 Humble Cock | Channel
🎖 Sleek Piranha | Channel
🎖 Sleek Kangaroo | Channel
🎖 Agile Monkey | Channel
🎖 Quirky Frog | Channel
🎖 Sexy Ladybird | Channel
🎖 Dandy Snail | Channel
🎖 Crazy Peacock | Channel
🎖 Jolly Elk | Channel
🎖 Sleek Mink | Channel

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Enjoy the rest of your Friday and have a great weekend ahead!

🏆 Design Contest 2026, Round 2

Deadline: 23:59 Dubai time @ May 17, 2026
Who can participate: only those who secured 🥈2nd or 🥉3rd places in Round 1.

📱 Telegram announces an express round of the Design Contest for selected winners of our previous competition.

The Task:
Identify weak spots in existing features of our official apps (Android, iOS, Telegram Desktop) and propose improvements – fixing the flaws and making the target features more elegant, convenient, simple, clear, or even more modern.

Contest Requirements:

1. You may submit up to 2 features.

2. Submissions must be in Before / After format.

3. Static only mockups are acceptable when no animation changes are involved.

4. Anything is within the scope – copy, spacing, colors, visuals – as long as the change noticeably improves the user experience.

Standout submissions will receive additional reward of up to $1,000 per each feature you improve. The best of you may get a chance to join the Telegram Team.

Submissions:
We will publish instructions how to submit your work closer to the deadline.

💎 Blockchain Contest, Round 2: Results

We awarded $100,400 to the winners of TON Consensus Challenge.

The core task was to find potential flaws in TON's new consensus algorithm – though participants were welcome to report any other flaws they came across.

All these efforts from the contestants helped us make the algorithm flawless.

1st PLACE
🥇 Happy Turtle – $19,800
🥇 Shiny Giraffe – $18,200
🥇 Dandy Ram – $13,200

2nd PLACE
🥈 Mighty Yak – $8,800
🥈 Kingly Rabbit – $8,400
🥈 Fit Piranha – $6,400
🥈 Gifted Ram – $4,400
🥈 Cool Fly – $4,400
🥈 Swift Gecko – $4,400

3rd PLACE
🥈 Witty Gorilla – $2,200
🥈 Young Walrus – $2,200
🥈 Quick Crab – $2,000
🥈 Kingly Crow – $2,000
🥈 Busy Unicorn – $2,000
🥈 Rich Phoenix – $2,000

Congratulations to the winners! Stay tuned for our next contests.

🏆 Contest for Artists: Results

😌 Our first artist contest of this scale drew hundreds of creative minds.

🤝 The review phase was intense and lengthy. We went through every submission with care and were thrilled by how many outstanding entries we found.

📬 Some artists have also been approached directly to explore further cooperation opportunities – in addition to their share of the prize fund.

Meet the winners!

Funky Clam | Channel – $5,110
Quick Lion | Channel – $3,010
Noble Bat | Channel – $2,660
Regal Gorilla | Channel – $2,380
Magic Gorilla | Channel – $1,960
Stone Mule | Channel – $1,890
Stout Lynx | Channel – $1,820
Sharp Wombat | Channel – $1,400
Dreamy Bee | Channel – $1,400
Mighty Leopard | Channel – $1,190
Agile Sloth | Channel – $1,120
Suave Leopard | Channel – $1,120
Sunny Unicorn | Channel – $1,120
Gentle Scorpion | Channel – $1,050
Suave Spider | Channel – $980
Small Horse | Channel – $980
Fluffy Fly | Channel – $910
Mad Puma | Channel – $840
Posh Dodo | Channel – $840
Night Cockroach | Channel – $840
Tactful Goat | Channel – $770
Cute Elk | Channel – $770
Merry Spider | Channel – $700
Wise Swan | Channel – $700
Posh Yak | Channel – $700
Fierce Mantis | Channel – $700
Suave Gull | Channel – $700
Shiny Fish | Channel – $700
Shiny Zebra | Channel – $700
Cuddly Starfish | Channel – $630
Small Tiger | Channel – $630
Bright Frog | Channel – $630
Witty Beetle | Channel – $560
Perfect Jaguar | Channel – $560
Happy Owl | Channel – $560

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Design Contest 2026, Round 2: Submissions

Reminder: only those who secured 🥈2nd or 🥉3rd places in Round 1 will be able to submit their work.

ContestBot will begin accepting your submissions during the next 24 hours – you will be able to submit your work by 23:59 Dubai Time on May 18th, 2026.

Similar to Round 1, your submission must include:
– A link to either a private or public channel, with all relevant media posted for each feature you propose improvements for. You are kindly advised to not reuse your old channels.
– A .zip archive with your static mockups (.png) and animated demos (if applicable).

Note: Your channel may stay private until the deadline. Make sure you assign it a username after the deadline. We will discard private channels from the evaluation.

🏆 Digital Freedom Contest

Prize Fund: $200,000
Deadline: July 15, 23:59 Dubai time
Results: August 2026

📱 Telegram is launching its most ambitious contest for content creators.

The Task
Create a viral video about digital freedom, post it on one of these platforms — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat Spotlights or X — and get 10,000+ authentic views.

Requirements and Conditions
– You must use at least some ideas and footage from Pavel Durov's speech;
– You may add any other media and ideas to promote digital freedom;
– You may submit multiple videos across multiple platforms.
– You may use any language and any tools to create your video.

Evaluation Criteria

Videos we deem low-quality or suspect of having generated non-organic views will be excluded. All other qualifying videos will be eligible for a share of the prize fund.

Submissions
We will publish instructions on how to submit links to your videos on July 6 in this channel.

Good luck! 🤞

🏆 Digital Freedom Contest: Clarifications and Submissions

We are glad to provide clarifications regarding the numerous similar questions we received:

Q: How many videos can be submitted?
A: You can submit multiple videos across different platforms – e.g., 3 separate videos for X and 2 for TikTok – or one video for each qualifying platform (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat or X), provided each separate video gained at least 10,000 views. Videos that gained fewer than 10,000 views will not be accepted for the competition and will not be eligible for a share of the prize fund.

Note: Videos we deem low-quality or suspect of having generated non-organic views will be excluded.

Q: When will submissions open, and how can I send my video(s)?
A: We will post a separate message in this channel in the coming days, once @ContestBot begins accepting submissions. You will have at least several days to submit your work, so do not worry – you will not miss it.

Note: @ContestBot is the only tool you will use to submit your work.

Q: I'm worried that my video will be stolen and submitted by someone else.
A: You must include your Telegram @username in the caption of the video on the external platform. This username must match the @username of the account from which you will submit the video. Videos that does not have a proper @username caption, will be discarded from the evaluation.