🏆 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! 🤞