Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.
Ainur Week 2026
Ainur Week will be returning from November 16 to 22, 2026.
Glorthelion Week 2026
𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔
Hello everyone and welcome to another year of Glorthelion week! An entire week dedicated to Glorfindel and Ecthelion relationship.
The event will run on Tumblr from November 16th to November 22nd. All creations are welcome, as long as it is created by you. Don't forget to tag #glorthelionweek and mention the blog (to make sure I can see your creation in case tags don't work).
Prompts are not mandatory! You can follow them, be inspired by them or let your imagination go wild and create whatever you want! Event rules can be found here.
Prompts 2026:
↳ Day one: A Glance across the Square | The Bells of Festivals | Gifts of the Heart
↳ Day two: Words in the Dark | Following the Star | The Weight of the Sword
↳ Day three: Silver and Gold | Sun and Moon | The Roar of the Waterfall
↳ Day four: Silver Flutes | The Language of Flowers | Water Mirrors
↳ Day five: A Final Glance | Entrusted Secrets | "I will find you again"
↳ Day six: Ashes and Sorrow | Waiting in Mandos | Forever Changed
↳ Day seven: Beyond the Circles of the World | Constellations | The Promise Kept
Happy creating!
Nolofinwëan Week 2026
Nolofinwëan week welcomes fan creations centering any members of the House of Fingolfin and their descendants through the ages.
Nolofinwëan week welcomes fan creations centering any members of the House of Fingolfin and their descendants through the ages.
To Participate:
- Create fanfiction, fanart, headcanons, close readings and musings, moodboards, photography, rec lists or anything else that inspires you to celebrate Nolofinwëan characters.
- Mention the blog @nolofinweanweek in your post and include the hashtag #nolofinweanweek2025 in the first 10 tags.
- If you would like, add your work to the AO3 collection.
- Take inspiration from the nonmandatory daily prompts.
- Complete one or more of the community challenges.
Rules & Requirements:
- There are no minimum or maximum requirements; anything goes!
- There are no content restrictions or rules on tagging beyond what AO3 requires of you. If you post to tumblr and your fill is Mature or Explicit, and/or falls under one of AO3’s major warnings, please provide tagging on your post, though!
- That said, please refrain from using genAI.
- This fest operates firmly under the premises of ‘don’t like; don’t read,’ ‘ship and let ship’ and ‘your kink is not my kink but that’s okay’ (if you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, see this post). We will not tolerate any shaming, harassment, or attempts to police content.
The mod runs on CET, but folks can post content or interact with the blog at their convenient time.
All prompts are non-obligatory—feel free to interpret as loosely or closely, to cross-match, or to ignore altogether!
Day 1: It Was But a Dream
- Characters: Turgon, Anairë, Idril
- Silmarillion Phrase: “poured forth their joy in music and song”
- Inspirational art:
Amber Fort, Jaipur #1 Photograph by Inger Hogstrom
Day 2: Breath of Darkness
- Characters: Elenwë, Argon
- Silmarillion Phrase: “there was now no returning”
- Inspirational art:
The Night Is Stirring (Anger) by Zao Wou-Ki
Day 3: Light Splinters the Sky
- Characters: Eöl, Eärendil, Gil-galad
- Silmarillion Phrase: “as a naked flame”
- Inspirational art:
Day 4: Embraced in the Mist
- Characters: Fingon, Aredhel
- Silmarillion Phrase: “green things even among the pits and broken rocks”
- Inspirational art:
Shan-Shui style painting by Yang Tianyou
Day 5: Flames Arising in Might
- Characters: Fingolfin, Maeglin
- Silmarillion Phrase: “shadows of madness and despair”
- Inspirational art:
Burning the Slums of Nairobi by Kiure Francis Msangi
Day 6: The Sea’s Embrace
- Characters: Elros, Elwing, Tuor
- Silmarillion Phrase: “still hope may seem bright”
- Inspirational art:
Moon Trace Art Installation by Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
Day 7: New Beginnings; Old Longings
- Characters: Elrond, Celebrían, Peredhil Descendants
- Silmarillion Phrase: “love would lead me”
- Inspirational art:
14th International Tolkien Mailing Competition
The Hungarian Tolkien Society invites you to join the international “Quendi” category of the Tolkien Mailing Competition: five rounds of quizzes, riddles and creative tasks. This category is organised in English, open to any individual participant, and also to teams of 2–5 people. The five rounds of the competition will last from November to April. Application deadline: 5 November, 2026.
The Tolkien Mailing Competition ("TLV" abbreviated from its Hungarian equivalent "Tolkien Levelező Verseny") takes place for the 21st time this year—and it is international for the 14th time. In the first years it was organised only in Hungarian, and only for groups of Hungarian students aged 10–18-years. As many people above this age group became interested in the competition, we launched a separate category for individuals in Hungarian, and at the same time we decided to go international. The outcome was definitely encouraging. In the past few years the international Quendi category had many participants (and for a while even an organiser) from various foreign countries: you can see here the final results of the previous competition.
(Click here for the Hungarian article about all categories.)
In the international Quendi category both the challenges and the communication will be entirely in English—but you don't have to be perfectly fluent in English for taking part in the competition. You only have to be able to understand the texts by Tolkien, and maybe to write a story or an essay—it does not have to be of academic level. The competition was originally devised for middle and high school students, and we did not make big changes in the style, but it is open to anybody who feels young enough for it. You can always choose to count your years by Elvish standards!
Participation in the Quendi category requires a thorough knowledge of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Other works by Tolkien may be needed occasionally, as some questions (riddles, quizzes, etc.) can refer to those, but you will have about four weeks for each round, that is, plenty of time to look up in the books everything you might need.
Besides the quizzes, there will be creative challenges. For example, you may be asked to describe a situation, write a short poem, make a drawing or take a photograph, etc. We would like to be proud of our participants, so we ask you to share the rights of your creative productions royalty-free (and you accept this condition by your registration for the competition). Your works—with due credit to authors/artists—might be published by the Hungarian Tolkien Society, e.g. on our website, www.tolkien.hu, or in our journal, the Lassi Laurië. (You can read about Lassi Laurië in English here.) Please do not publish these works yourself without consulting us first, and especially not before the end of the competition. (Artwork submitted by teams is credited as teamwork by default, but you can add the name of the actual author/artist for each piece.)
You can participate in the Quendi category alone as an individual competitor, or you can participate as a member of a team of 2–5 people. The individual competitors and the teams will receive the same set of tasks, but the winner will be announced separately for individuals and teams.
As an individual competitor, you can make the decision to solve only the quizzes or only the creative tasks in each round: besides the absolute winners of the individual and team subcategories, the separate winners of the lexical and the creative parts will also be announced. This choice is only available for individual competitors, teams are expected to do the full version!
We will go on with the team competition only if we receive at least 5 applications from teams. If we have to cancel the team competition, team members will have the opportunity to compete on their own or to withdraw their application. There is also a maximum limit of 60 competitors (individuals and teams counted together) in the Quendi category (and we got quite close to this limit last year).
The contest starts in November and continues until April. Every month you will receive the questions of the next round (five rounds overall), and you will have to submit your solutions until the indicated deadline (you will have about four weeks for each round). Communication is done via e-mail. Our e-mail address is tlv[at]tolkien.hu: questions and comments are always welcome there. We are happy to answer all your questions about the competition—except disclosing the solutions of the actual tasks.
Not submitting your solutions for two consecutive rounds means quitting the competition.
There will be no prizes in the international category, only the public announcement of your achievement and a certificate sent by e-mail. There is no registration fee, either.
If you want to participate, please fill in this online registration form.
Registration as an individual competitor: choose the “I am competing alone.” option on the form.
Registration as a team: each team member should fill in a registration form separately, choose the “I am a member of a team of 2-5 people.” option, and provide the same team name. We also need a contact person for each team. Please agree on a unique team name and choose a contact person from the team before starting the registration.
You should see an automatic confirmation message after the successful registration, but if you are in doubt about the success of your registration, ask the organisers via e-mail whether they have received your registration or not! You should receive the first round of tasks during the week after the application deadline. If you do not receive it, write to us!
The application deadline is:
5 November, 2026
Tolkien Food Week 2026
Tolkien food week 2026 themes
2nd of November- Dùnedain travel food
3rd Nov- plant-based
4th Nov- hobbit hole recipes
5th Nov - Elven feasts
6th Nov - at the Prancing pony
7th Nov- Dwarven banquets
8th Nov - at the Valar's table 🦅
Fics, recipes, ficlets, art, photos, polls, crack... have fun
These are mere suggestions ofc, you absolutely can post when you want on theme or not 😉
(Headers/banners here if you want)
The White Oliphaunt 2026
Sign ups will open on November 1st, 2026. See the blog linked in this announcement for more details.
Around the World and Web Archive
Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.
February Challenge at tolkienshorfanworks (Dreamwidth)
The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for February has been posted.
The thematic challenge is: melting.
The formal challenge is: proverb.
Tolkienshortfanworks is a community on Dreamwidth and new joiners are always welcome.
More details about these prompts and the monthly challenges at the linked post.
Call for Proposals: German Tolkien Society Seminar
The 18th Tolkien Seminar of the German Tolkien Society (Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft) is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and takes place in a hybrid format (mainly in person but with online options) at the Department of English (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik) at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena from 28th to 30th October 2022.
If you would like to present a paper, please send a short abstract (no longer than one page) and a short biography, as well as the preferred way of participating (online or in person) by 30th May 2022.
As can be seen from many of the texts recently published in the volume The Nature of Middle-earth (2021; edited by Carl Hostetter), Tolkien extensively studied the different aspects of the space- and time-continuum. He did so often in order to give his subcreated world a cohesive and coherent temporal and spatial framework. Therefore, aspects belonging primarily to the field of ‘worldbuilding’ will be one aspect to be explored. However, we also want to encourage participants to investigate the narrative effects of space and time.
The seminar aims at bringing together researchers from various disciplines in order to explore the theoretical foundations and the literary mise-en-scène of the time-space continuum in Tolkien’s work.
See the full call for proposals for contact information and full details.
Bring Her Bleeding Heart to Me: Dark Femslash Commentfic Meme
For this annual multifandom event, participants can prompt dark femslash fanworks or create for the prompts that have been posted. All fanworks and femslash pairings are welcome. This is an 18+ event. The full rules can be found here.
Fandom Trumps Hate Sign-Ups Open
Fandom Trumps Hate is an online auction of fanworks, with the proceeds going to small, progressive nonprofits that are working to protect marginalized people. Fandom Trumps Hate has raised over $135,000 for a range of amazing organizations.
Sign-ups for this year's auction are now open and close on February 13. Bidding runs February 23-27.
See this post on Tumblr for more information on how to sign up as a creator (here is the sign-up post on Dreamwidth).
Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology XII
It’s time for the twelfth annual Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology! As always, we'll be collecting short lady-centric podfics by different readers in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files.
The submission deadline for podfics is February 14th, and we will post the anthology on February 28th.
The theme for this year's anthology is exploration. It's optional—all podfics are welcome as long as they follow the rules laid out in the Submission Guidelines—but feel free to let it inspire you if you'd like.
If you are not familiar with this project, you can see the previous eleven anthologies here.
To Podficcers: Interested in participating? We'd love to have you. This should be a low-stress project, even for people who are new to podficcing, due to the word-count: 1500 words or less (with many being as short as 1-2 minutes). If you'd like to record something for this anthology, please fill out this quick google form and we'll send you the link to the spreadsheet where we'll be keeping track of all the podfics. If you would prefer to interface via email instead of using the form/spreadsheet, you can email klb at sekritproject@gmail.com, and she will reach out to get you set up.
Complete guidelines for the Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology can be found here.
Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2022 Schedule Posted
The 2022 schedule for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang is as follows:
- 1st April - suggestions spreadsheet opens
- 15th April - sign ups open
- 8th May - artist sign ups close
- 15th May - art drafts due
- 20th May - gallery open
- 22nd May - author sign ups close
- 29th May - claims
- (***TBA - additional claims***)
- 5th June - post claims check in
- 12th June - final art due from artists who chose the “free rein” collaboration option
- 26th June - check in #2
- 31st July - check in #3
- 7th August - final art due from all other artists
- 14th August - final check in / deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter
- 4th September - fics due in collection
- 9th September - reveals
- 12th September - staggered Tumblr reblogs begin
Note that this year's bang will only allow two submissions per artist in order to keep numbers manageable.
To keep up with the 2022 event, follow TRSB on Tumblr or @TolkienRSB on Twitter.
Squidge Restoration of Lost Podfics
The fandom archive Squidge has hosted the Jinjurly audio/podfic archive for a couple of years now, but have only recently taken control of the day-to-day stuff that needs to be done. Furthermore, a hack of the Jinjurly archive resulted in the loss of many, many podfics. Site moderators have recovered a number of files for the archive.
They are asking the podfic community who may have used Jinjurly if they have replacement files. They also need volunteers to help with the immense task they are undertaking to restore these fanworks.
For now, there is a Google Form for submitting replacement files or new podfics for the archive.
The Squidge Status Dreamwidth has much more information on the project and ways to get involved to help.
Second Age Week, January 17-23
Showing love and appreciation for the Second Age in all its facets. From proud Númenoreans to deep digging Dwarves, to the last High King of the Noldor, and the Dark Lord of Mordor - this week is dedicated to all of them and more!
A list of non-mandatory prompts below:
Day 1 Elves - Gil-galad, Oropher, Celebrían and many others - Lindon and Belfalas, Imladris and Eregion, Lórinand and Greenwood. What were the elves doing in the Second Age? This day is dedicated to them and their many endeavours.
Day 2 Men - What made Drúedain leave Númenor? What occurred in the East where the Blue Wizards journeyed? What was the situation on Númenor under Ar-Gimilzôr’s rule? On this day of Second Age Week, we explore the race of Men - from proud Númenoreans, through those who would come to be known as Dunlendings, to the Haradrim in the South.
Day 3 Dwarves - From Ered Luin through Khazad Dûm to the Eastern Realms, dwarves played an important role during the Second Age. On this day you can explore their history and culture, events they participated in, prominent characters such as Durin IV. or Narvi and more!
Day 4 Sauron and his minions - Annatar, Zigûr, Tar-Mairon, Gorthaur - in the Second Age, Sauron was at his strongest. With his lies and deceits, he weaved his way into the court of Númenor and the forge of Eregion and began a reign of terror from his fortress in Mordor. This day is dedicated to him and his many followers.
Day 5 Artefacts and Symbols - The Second Age was full of prominent artefacts and symbols - from the Rings of Power to the White Tree of Númenor, their history and fate - there’s plenty to explore!
Day 6 Impactful events - The rise and fall of kingdoms; councils and meetings, battles and wars - during the spam of 3441 of this Age, history books could easily be filled.
Day 7 Freeform - Did we forget about something or is there a prompt you want to revisit? Feel free to use this day for any Second Age related content!
The week will run on Tumblr during January 2022 - 17th to 23rd - and will be hosted by @iminye and @armenelols.
More details about tags, etc. in the linked post.
Worldbuilding Exchange (Final Year)
This will be the final year of the Worldbuilding Exchange. See their Dreamwidth page for more details on how to sign up, information about this being the last year for the exchange, and relevant links: https://worldbuildingex.dreamwidth.org/
Seasons of Drabbles: Winter Round 2022
Seasons of Drabbles is an exchange for the creation of drabbles and drabble variants. It will run once per season. The current round is for winter 2021-2022.
Schedule:
Nominations open: January 3 (will remain open through signups)
Signups open: January 9
Signups close: January 16 @ 11:59pm Eastern time (Countdown)
Assignments out by: January 19
Assignments due: January 29 @ 11:59pm Eastern time (Countdown)
Collection opens: February 06 @ noon Eastern time (Countdown)
Authors revealed: February 8 @ noon Eastern time
AO3 Collection | Tagset | Nomination guidelines | Mod email: seasonsofdrabbles@gmail.com