The Cinema Foundation of Armenia has announced the 2026.1 and 2026.2 state support calls for the film sector, intended respectively for feature-length and short film projects.
The calls are being conducted under the Regulations on Organising and Conducting Competitions for the Allocation of State Funding in the Field of Cinematography, approved by Order No. 32-N of the Armenian Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport dated 1 July 2026.
The total public funding budget amounts to AMD 272,715,300. The funds will be allocated under Action 11001, “Film Production,” within Programme 1056, “Cinematography Programme,” of Armenia’s state budget, with financial support from the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport.
The 2026.1 call for feature-length film projects has been allocated 65 per cent of the total budget, amounting to AMD 177,264,945. Applications are accepted in the fiction, documentary and animation categories. The minimum target is to support at least two projects in each category.
The 2026.2 call for short film projects has been allocated 35 per cent of the total budget, or AMD 95,450,355. It also covers fiction, documentary and animation projects. The stated minimum target is to support at least two fiction projects, one documentary project and one animated project.
According to the Foundation’s announcement, the competition regulations, lists of required documents and the relevant application forms have been published in the “Competitions” section of the Foundation’s official website, cfarmenia.am.
Applications must be submitted in accordance with the procedure established by the regulations to filmproject.sub@gmail.com.
Applications will be accepted for 30 calendar days following the publication of the official announcement.
However…
There is also an issue concerning the completeness of the competition documentation made available to applicants. Under Clause 23(6) of the regulations approved by Ministerial Order No. 32-N of 1 July 2026, the official competition announcement must include a model agreement on the provision of support to be signed with applicants whose projects receive state funding.
Although the Foundation’s announcement states that the model agreement has been published in the “Competitions” section of its official website, the document was not available as a separate file at the time of publication.
Moreover, the “Regulations” page in the website’s “Competitions” section continued to display the previous regulations approved by Order No. 57-L of the Director of the Cinema Foundation of Armenia dated 18 April 2025. The 2026 calls, however, are being conducted under the new regulations approved by Ministerial Order No. 32-N.
Given that the new regulations were approved on 1 July, the Foundation had more than a month to prepare for the competition procedure, update the relevant section of its website and publish the full set of documents required under the regulations.
As a result, at the time the calls were launched, the Foundation had not fully updated the relevant section of its website, while the model agreement—an obligatory component of the official announcement—was not effectively accessible to potential applicants.
The structure of the two calls also raises a separate legal question. Under Article 24(2) of Armenia’s Law on Cinematography, public funding competitions must be held at least twice a year.
At the same time, the regulations approved by Order No. 32-N provide that each competition should cover two types of projects—feature-length and short films—and three categories: fiction, documentary and animation. The same regulations also require the formation of two separate expert panels within each competition, one for feature-length projects and one for short film projects.
The Foundation, however, has separated feature-length and short film projects and presented them as two distinct calls, numbered 2026.1 and 2026.2. Both announcements have the same application period, are financed from the same overall allocation under the same state-budget action and, taken together, cover the two project types that the regulations envisage within a single competition.
This approach raises the question of whether the Foundation is in fact conducting the minimum two annual competition rounds required by law, or whether it has divided one competition procedure into feature-length and short film sections and formally presented them as two separate competitions.
Should no further full public funding round be announced during 2026, compliance with the statutory requirement to hold competitions “at least twice a year” would become particularly questionable.
