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
- Contest number — optional, in case your association numbers its leagues (maximum 12 characters). Not to be confused with the number each sponsor assigns to the league, which is set in the Sponsors tab.
- 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
Ticking Social also reveals the "Only visible to the association" switch. Turn it on if you don't want the league to be public:
- It never appears on the Picstar home page. That listing is public to everyone, so a restricted league is left out of it — even for your own members.
- On your association's page only members and administrators see it, and they must be signed in.
- Anyone following the direct link who is neither a member nor an administrator gets a page-not-found.
The switch only exists for the social scope: remove Social and the league becomes visible to everyone again. You can change it at any time, including after publishing the league.
Step 3 — Sponsors
Sponsors have their own Sponsors tab, with two kinds:
- Approved sponsors — organisations recognised by Picstar (photographic federations and confederations). You pick them from a list and they already come with their logo and acronym: FIAP, CEF, FCF, FAFPV and FAFIBA. When you select one you are asked for the contest number that organisation assigns to this league, which you can leave blank. To change it, click the sponsor card and use Update number. To take it off, hover over its card and click the ✕ (Unselect sponsor): the sponsor is unselected and its number goes with it.
- Other sponsors — you add these yourself with a name, acronym and logo. To change one, click its card and use Update sponsor: you can edit the name, acronym, number and logo. Their contest number is always optional. To remove them, hover over their card and click the ✕ (Remove sponsor).
Sponsors can be changed while the contest is not finished, even once it is published or under way.
If you are a sponsor and would like to become approved, write to us at hola@picstar.es.
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. With One theme per round ticked it is fixed at 1 and cannot be changed
- Submissions open (optional) — first day on which photos can be submitted to that theme. If you leave it empty, the theme accepts photos from the moment the league starts, which is the long-standing behaviour. Setting it lets each round be uploaded only during its month: "May's round, in May". Before that date the upload button is disabled and states when it opens, in each participant's own clock
- 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.
One theme per round
Next to the button for creating themes there is a One theme per round checkbox. When ticked, each participant submits a single photo to one of the themes of each round: as soon as they upload their photo to one, the other themes in that round are blocked, with the button greyed out telling them which theme they already entered. To switch themes, they remove that photo and enter another one.
This is the setting for rules that ask for "one work a month, in whichever theme you choose". Ticking the box limits every theme to one photo: the app adjusts the Number of photos of any theme that allowed more and tells you which ones it changed.
The checkbox appears once the league has at least one round defined, because the rule applies within each round. A theme that belongs to no round is never blocked by another one, although it also takes a single photo. You can tick and untick it while the league is a draft.
When the league repeats the same themes every round, the Duplicate round button copies a whole batch at once. You pick which round to copy (the latest by default), type the name of the new one —June, for instance— and the themes keep their own name ("Night" stays "Night" in every round, and the month comes from the round); pick the new closing date and adjust any name or description before confirming. Duplicated themes inherit the photo limit, the jury group and their thematic leagues, and the new round is created for you with them inside, so the season ends up grouped along both axes with no extra work. What never gets duplicated is a thematic league: Night is a single one for the whole year. The button is available while the league is not published. In the same dialog you set the new round's dates —the closing date and, if you want, the opening of submissions— and, if the league splits the jury into groups, you choose which group judges it instead of going theme by theme; by default it keeps the source theme's group.
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, you can split the jury into several groups (up to 4) that take turns on the themes: two groups judging alternate months, for instance. Set the number of groups and tick in the matrix which groups each juror belongs to. The same person can be in several groups, which lets a small association build two groups of three with only five jurors. Every group must have the same number of jurors: the standings add up points, so a bigger group would make its round worth more than the others. The counter on each column tells you how many people it holds. Each juror only sees and votes the themes assigned to their groups; the secretary and the association admins always see and manage everything. With the number of groups at 1, every juror votes every theme. The line-up can be changed freely as long as nobody has voted; once the first vote comes in it is fixed, and to change someone you use Replace. A theme's group is picked in the Group column of the themes table and can still be changed while that theme accepts photos; moving it to another group means the votes it already had from the previous group stop counting there (none are deleted, and they count again if you put it back).
- Voting criteria (optional) — leagues with remote voting only. You can define up to 5 criteria named however your association names them (lighting, composition, originality…). With criteria defined, each juror scores every criterion separately on each photo and the photo score is the average of those values; without them, each photo gets a single score. Criteria are set while the league is a draft.
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.
Step 7 — Images
The Images tab decides which photos the league accepts. The requirements are checked at submission time: a photo that does not meet them is never uploaded, and the participant sees straight away which requirement failed.
- Long side — required. It caps the longer side of the photo, whether that is the width or the height, so a panorama and a portrait shot are measured by the same rule.
- Short side — optional. Left blank, any proportion is accepted as long as the long side fits.
- Max size — picked from a list, from 1 to 5 MB.
- Minimum width and Minimum height — optional. Unlike the maximums, these apply to each axis separately: asking for 2000 wide and 3000 tall accepts a portrait photo of 2000×3000 and rejects the same photo rotated, at 3000×2000. Left blank, no minimum is required.
- Required dpi — optional. These are the pixels per inch the photo must state in its metadata, and the check is exact: ask for 300 and both a 72 dpi photo and a 600 dpi one are rejected. A photo that does not state its resolution is rejected too, and the message tells the participant to export it again stating that resolution. Only JPEG and PNG can store the resolution, so requiring it rules out WebP, AVIF and GIF: anyone submitting one of those is asked to change format.
Participants see these requirements in the upload window before choosing a photo, so they do not discover the limit by failing.
If the minimums you ask for leave no room for any possible photo — a minimum width larger than the long side, for instance — the form will not let you save and points at the conflicting field.
The requirements can no longer be edited once the league is published.
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, it cannot be changed or deleted. This protects participants who have already entered, especially in paid leagues. The exceptions are sponsors, each theme's Active switch (step 4), which you can keep changing after publishing to open themes as the league goes on, and the jury and the secretary (step 5). A league can be published without a jury or a secretary: you can open the season and name the jury later, which is the usual case when you do not yet know who will judge. As long as nobody has voted you can add, remove and regroup whoever you want. With the first vote the line-up becomes fixed: from then on nobody can be removed, and to change someone you use Replace. Without a secretary the league is not stuck: you just cannot finalise themes or close it until one is named. Once the league is finalised or archived, it stops accepting changes of any kind.
Replacing a jury member
If a jury member drops out mid-league, click Replace on their row in the Voting tab and choose who takes over. There is no need to wait for the league to end.
Before you confirm, the screen tells you exactly what will happen: how many open themes the substitute will judge and, if the outgoing member has already scored in them, how many of their votes will stop counting there.
Worth knowing:
-
Finalized themes do not change. Their results stay exactly as the jury that voted them left them, and those votes keep counting there. Only the themes that are still open move to the new jury member.
-
The substitute inherits the outgoing member's group, so they receive the same themes without you assigning anything.
-
Every replacement is recorded. The group is then shown as "2.1", "2.2"…: that is the jury composition judging the open themes from that point on. Earlier themes keep the composition that judged them, so the minutes always show who voted each theme.
-
If every theme in a group is finalized, the button is disabled: replacing that jury member would have no effect.
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.
Cumulative standings: thematic leagues and rounds
When a league repeats the same themes every round, each round is an independent theme with its own deadline and its own voting. Those themes support two different standings, which is why there are two separate lists:
- Thematic leagues — the same theme across the season. "Night" brings together the nine night rounds of the year, and its standings are the night sub-league.
- Rounds — the moment in the season. "April" brings together that month's themes, and its standings are the month's across every category.
A theme belongs to one round and to as many thematic leagues as you want: "April - Night" is in the April round and in the Night thematic league, so it counts towards both standings.
Both lists are defined in the Themes tab while setting up the league, under Thematic leagues and Rounds: you type the name and then, as you create each theme, you pick its round and tick its thematic leagues. They are optional: without any of them the league works just the same. They can also be managed from the voting screen with the Theme groups button, which is where you adjust them once the league is published, choosing the group type there. The salon chairman and the association administrators create them; the jury can see them but not change them. Each one takes:
- Group name — how it should read in the selector, e.g. Night
- Themes it adds up — the themes whose scores accumulate
A thematic league can group related themes and not only the repetitions of one: "Landscape" may bring night shots and beaches together.
Once created, they appear in the theme selector in two sections, Rounds and Thematic leagues. Picking one shows Cumulative standings with its name, each participant's total score and, below, how many rounds already count (for instance 3 of 9 themes closed).
Only closed rounds add up. A theme of the group that is still open contributes no points: it joins the total as soon as it is closed.
The award for a themed league is assigned from its own cumulative standings, as soon as every round of the group is closed: that is how you reward whoever won the night league without waiting for the season to end. The award for the whole season is still assigned from the General classification.
💡
Here is a step-by-step video explanation: