Helsinki Comics Festival used to give out an award for the Most Heavenly zine. Later, during the golden era of comics blogs, the award was turned into Best comics blog of the year -award. In 2021 the contest changed and expanded. Ever since, instead of the one, we have given out two awards: Most Heavenly zine and Most Heavenly webcomic!
In the year 2024 the contest expanded even more, because we wanted to include each category’s top 3 entries. The diplomas and the winners’ trophies will be handed out in a festive award ceremony in Zine Fest.
Award: Year’s Most Heavenly zine and Most Heavenly webcomic winners will receive a trophy, diploma and will get their works displayed in the next year’s Zine Fest’s Heavenly exhibition.
Application instruction
Most Heavenly Zine
Suitable works for the category:
- Any self-published comic.
- Comic published by a collective.
- Comics from very small publishers – or publishers owned by individual artists, that are closer in size to collectives.
- Comics that have been finished within the last five years.
- Comics that have competed in their category earlier, but has not been nominated a finalist or won.
- If your comic is a part of a longer series, enter with one part/chapter.
- Zine that is finished
Most Heavenly Webcomic
Suitable works for the category:
- If it’s online, it counts! Any webcomic which is published on, for example, Instagram, Patreon, Webtoon, Tapas, Tumblr, ComicFury, your own website or blog platform is eligible.
- Ebooks, if they’ve never been printed and do not exceed 30 pages. (If the E-book has been printed, please submit them to the Small Press category instead.)
- Webcomic that has been updated within the last year.
- Webcomic that has been finished within the last five years.
- Webcomic that has competed earlier in this category, but not nominated as a finalist or won.
- Webcomic of which at least 20 pages have been published.
- E-book that has been finished.
Instructions for sending:
- Send us your entry as a PDF or link to the website in the form. We will not download any files due to security reasons. PDF must be readable in a browser without having to be downloaded.
- Please note that your work must be readable without a log in or sign-up to any platform.
- Zine must be sent as a whole as PDF.
- Webcomic PDF-collection must be 20-40 pages long.
- Link your webcomic from the point you want us to read 20-40 pages forward.
- In case of a webcomic being in strip format or having a non-linear plot, you can collect the best 20-40 pages as a PDF-file.
- E-books must be sent whole.
- E-book or ZIne can be shorter than 20 pages.
- Please ensure that the link works. We cannot judge a comic we cannot read.
- Please log into your Google-account to fill the form.
Other things to note:
- This is probably needless to say, but if your comic has been nominated as a finalist or won the Most Heavenly Small Press or Most Heavenly Webcomic award, don’t enter it again.
- The award is meant for Finnish people, Finns living outside of Finland or people who are living in Finland right now regardless of their nationality.
- Participating comics must be in either Finnish or English.
- It’s our hope that the winners and anyone else receiving a diploma would be personally present at Zine Fest, in Helsinki.
Generative AI or GenAI
Zine Fest does not allow the use of AI generated (wholly or partly) material in the competition entries. Please take care not to use any AI-assisted tools in whatever software you work with.
By sending a filled form, you verify that you have not used AI in any part of the process of creating your work.
Competition is open 1.6.2026 – 28.6.2026
If you’re unsure or have any questions regarding the competition, email us at helsinkizinefest@gmail.com
