Creating a league
A league is a recurring photography competition organized by an association, made up of several monthly themes. To create one, go to My associations, click the association's ⚙️ gear icon, and select Create league.
Step 1 — General information
- Name — e.g. League 2026
- Description — free-form text (bold, lists, etc.) briefly explaining the league. The detailed rules will go in a separate PDF.
- Cover photo — representative image (it's recommended to follow the indicated size). It can be last year's winning photo or another related image.
- Start of entries — date on which users can start submitting photos
- Verdict — end date of the league (e.g. December 31)
- Price — if the league is free, set it to 0€
- League rules — PDF file with the official, detailed rules
Step 2 — Scope
Define who can participate:
- Social — only association members can participate
- National — any user of the platform can participate nationally
- International — open to any user of the platform, with an international sponsor
Step 3 — Sponsors
If the league has sponsors, you can add them by entering a name and description (e.g. CEF — Spanish Confederation of Photography). As many as needed can be added.
Step 4 — Themes
Themes are the league's monthly photography challenges. For each theme, specify:
- Theme name — e.g. April theme
- Number of photos — how many photos each participant can submit
- End date — last day on which users can submit photos to that theme
- Active — a toggle that controls whether the theme is visible. A disabled theme won't show up on the public page or in participants' photo submission screen (photos already submitted and their votes aren't affected). Use it to progressively activate themes as the league goes on: you can change it at any point while the league isn't finished, even after the league has been published (see below).
As many themes are created as the league has months. Each theme is saved separately.
Step 5 — Voting
Configure who evaluates the photographs:
- Salon Chairman — the person who manages the contest: sets it up, oversees the voting, can close the voting process early if a juror is not going to vote, and is the one who awards the final prizes based on the results. Cannot also be a juror.
- Jury — one or more users who will vote on the photographs. Search for them by email, nickname or name. There can be as many jurors as needed.
- Voting mode:
- Remote — each juror votes from home
- In-person — voting takes place in person
- Jury groups (optional) — if the league has many themes or a large volume of photos, you can split the jury into several groups (up to 10). Set the number of groups, then assign a group to each juror and each theme from their respective tables. Each juror will only see and be able to vote on the themes assigned to their own group; the Salon Chairman and association admins always see and manage everything. If you leave the number of groups at 1, all jurors vote on all themes as before.
Step 6 — Awards
Add the awards to be given. For each award, specify:
- Name — e.g. First prize
- Description — e.g. Amazon gift card
- Value — e.g. €100
Awards are assigned manually at the end of the league and can be edited or removed while the league is in draft.
Draft and publishing
While the league is in draft, you can save and edit all the details as many times as you need. Once everything is ready, click Publish.
⚠️ Important: once the league is published, no changes can be made and it cannot be deleted. This is to protect participants who have already registered, especially in paid leagues. The exceptions are each theme's Active toggle (step 4), which you can keep changing after publishing to activate themes as the league progresses, and the jury and Salon Chairman (step 5), which you can replace while the league isn't finished, whatever state it is in. That way you can bring in a substitute for a jury member or chairman who drops out at any point, although you can never leave the league without any active jury or without a chairman. Once the league is finished or archived, it no longer accepts changes of any kind.
Replacing a jury member
If a jury member drops out mid-league, you can remove them and add a substitute from the Voting tab, without waiting for the league to finish.
Two things to keep in mind:
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If the league has groups, assign the substitute the same group the outgoing member had. A jury member without a group receives no themes and cannot vote; the group selector is highlighted in red while it is unassigned.
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Already finalized themes do not change. Their results stay exactly as the jury that voted them left them, because those are the votes that count. Themes still open are voted by the current jury.
Inviting participants
When you publish a league, Picstar emails the platform users that match its scope: everyone if it is national or international, and only your association's members if it is social.
If you also keep your own contact list, you can reach them with Invite participants, the button at the top right of the league detail screen.
- Click Invite participants.
- Paste the addresses into the text box. Each one turns into a tag. You can copy a whole column from your spreadsheet: line breaks, tabs, commas and semicolons all work as separators, and so does the
Name Surname <address@domain.com>format. - Below the box you will see how many addresses are valid, how many are duplicates and how many are malformed. Duplicates are dropped automatically and malformed ones are flagged in red so you can remove or fix them.
- Click Send invitations and confirm with Send.
Everyone receives their own email, with the same new league announcement that Picstar sends, and nobody sees the other addresses.
Before sending, Picstar drops the addresses that are already registered on the platform and have received the automatic announcement for this league, so that nobody gets it twice. Registered users who have turned off new contest notifications are dropped as well. Once it finishes, a message tells you how many invitations went out and how many were skipped.
⚠️ Important: this action can only be used once per league. Afterwards the button is disabled and hovering over it shows how many invitations were sent. Check the list carefully before confirming.
League statuses
Once published, the league goes through the following statuses:
- Published — visible but with no activity. Photos cannot be submitted yet.
- Started — every hour the system checks whether the start date has arrived. When it does, the league automatically switches to this status and participants can start submitting photos.
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Here is a step-by-step video explanation: