Film the guitar you built. Share in 500 USD.

One video. Aim for 1 to 3 minutes. Up to 5 minutes is fine. We will not rule anyone out on length.

Show the guitar, then play it. We want to see both, so give yourself time for each. Filmed on a phone is fine: no studio, no editing, one take is fine. Tell us which kit it started as and anything you changed along the way.

About the music. Play something you wrote, something out of copyright, or a riff. If you play a full cover of a song someone else owns, we may not be able to republish the audio, and we will usually mute it or put our own music under the picture. That is not a mark against your entry. It is just how music rights work.

Fill in the form on this page. That is the entry, and it takes about a minute.

If you want to post the video publicly as well, please do, we love that, but it is optional and it does not change your chances. Put it on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, tag #GuitarKitWorldContest so people can see it is a contest entry, add #ad if you are in the UK, then paste the link into the form.

If you are not on social media, upload the file to Google Drive, Dropbox or WeTransfer, set the link so anyone can open it, and paste that in instead. Tick the box on the form and we will put it up on our channels for you.

Either way, neither route is judged more favorably. Just make sure the link actually opens for us.

Our own team and their families can build and be featured, but cannot win a prize. Otherwise you need to be 18 or older, and the guitar has to have started as a Guitar Kit World kit: the body and the neck have to be ours. You do not have to have bought it, and you do not have to be the person playing it.

We can take entries from anywhere, apart from Italy, whose promotion law needs a filing and a bond this competition is too small to justify, and apart from anywhere US sanctions law stops us sending something of value.

If anyone in your video is under 18, tell us on the form and confirm that their parent or guardian is happy for us to use the video in our marketing. Without that we will still judge the entry, but we will not use it in any advertising.

Read the full rules.

Two things, weighted evenly: the guitar and the playing.

The build. The finish you got right, the wiring, the fretwork, the details you sweated, the parts you upgraded.

The playing. Any style, any level, whoever is holding it. We are not looking for the fastest player.

A clean build played simply beats a rough build played fast.

At least two people from the Guitar Kit World team judge every round, including someone who builds. This is a competition of skill, not a draw. If two entries tie, we score them again on the build alone and the higher build score wins.

500 USD in Guitar Kit World gift cards every round, across ten builders: 150 USD for first, 100 USD for second, 75 USD for third, and 25 USD each for fourth through tenth.

If a round gets fewer than ten entries, everyone who entered wins, starting at first place and working down.

The gift card is store credit for guitarkitworld.com. It works on anything in the store including shipping, there is no minimum spend, and you can combine cards. Our kits start at 179.99 USD, so a card is money off a build rather than a whole kit on its own.

We judge in rounds. Round 2 runs from October 1 to December 31, 2026, and we announce the winners by January 10, 2027. Anything we receive before October 1 goes into Round 2. Your confirmation email tells you which round you are in.

We also email everyone who has entered when a round is about to close, so you do not have to keep an eye on this page.

Each round is a separate competition with its own prize pool. If we ever stop running the challenge we will say so here first, and we will still judge and pay out every round that has already opened.

This is a competition to be featured. That is the whole point of it.

You keep ownership of your video. Entering gives us permission to use, edit, republish and advertise with it: our website, our email, our social channels and our ads.

Editing means the ordinary things: trimming it, cutting a shorter clip, adding captions or our logo, and muting or replacing the audio where the music is not ours to use. We will never edit it to make you look like you said something you did not. We credit the builder wherever the format allows.

The full terms are section 9 of our Terms of Service. If you would rather we did not use your video that way, this is not the right thing to enter.

No. Those are two different things.

The Build & Play Challenge is a competition with a deadline and a fixed prize pool. Our build video reward is a separate, always-open program with no deadline that rewards a public video of your build with an individual gift card.

You are welcome to do both.