Kazakhstan hosted the Astana AI Film Festival (AAIFF 2026), billed as the world’s largest international competition for films produced with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

A total of 8,067 films from 125 countries were submitted for the festival, according to a report released on Monday by Kazakh news agency.

In terms of the number of films submitted, Kazakhstan came in second with 829 films, while the United States topped the list with 1,395 films.

Apart from this, 702 films were submitted from India, 550 from China and 349 from South Korea.

Astana AI Film Festival co-founder and board chairman Almas Jhali has said that just a few months ago we were starting an international competition and today we have received more than 8 thousand films from 125 countries.

Izzatullah Hussain, co-founder and creative director of the festival, said that the concept of this festival was presented in December 2025 in Astana during the rapid development in creative video technology.

He said that now we can clearly say that the Astana AI Film Festival is the largest AI film festival in the world, be it in terms of its $2 million funding or the number of submitted films.

According to media reports, nearly 40 percent of the submitted films, i.e. 3,138 films, covered the main theme of the festival, ‘Livable Future’, with a total duration of over 100,000 minutes, produced by 4,756 filmmakers with the help of more than 80 creative artificial intelligence models.

A total prize money of 1 million dollars has been earmarked for the festival, with 750 thousand dollars for the main theme program and 250 thousand dollars for the 5 open categories.