Nominations are open!

[mimihylea]

Nominations for Worldbuilding Exchange 2026 are now open! Nominate at the tagset here.

You may nominate up to five fandoms. For each fandom, there are five character slots and six "worldbuilding" slots. Because of the limitations of AO3 tag sets, we will be using the "Relationship" field for worldbuilding elements.

Nominate only single characters in the Character field; groups or relationships (/ or &) will be rejected.

Nominate only worldbuilding tags in the Relationship field; groups or relationships (/ or &) will be rejected. All worldbuilding tags should start with the prefix "WB: ".

Fandoms must have at least one worldbuilding tag nominated by the end of nominations, or they will be rejected.

See the full nomination rules below:

Fandoms

Please nominate fandoms in a way that makes it clear which canons you are looking to receive/create worldbuilding fanworks about, whether the names match AO3 canonicals or not. Unlike many other exchanges, in Worldbuilding Exchange it is expected that in some cases overlapping canons will exist within the tag set, since the worldbuilding ideas people might come up with will differ depending on which source materials they are considering. For example, previously both Dragon Age (All Media Types) and Dragon Age II were in the tag set. However, if it’s possible to nominate a more distinct fandom rather than a larger umbrella, it’s probably better for matching purposes to do so.

Please check already-approved tags before you start nominating, and try to be consistent with what has already been put in the tag set if your ideas are compatible.

"Original Work - [Genre]" will be allowed as a fandom. For example, "(Original Work - High Fantasy)", "(Original Work - Hard SF Space Setting)", etc.

“Creator’s Choice of Fandom” will not be allowed as a fandom.

Real Person Fiction (RPF) and fandoms that are closely based on real events (such as “Hamilton” or “The Crown”) will not be allowed, on the grounds that "real world worldbuilding", if it means anything at all, covers essentially all forms of human intellectual enquiry from quantum cosmology to celebrity journalism, and is therefore outside the scope of a fanworks exchange.

Crossovers are eligible if the crossover actually happened within one or other of the canons involved, as this implies shared worldbuilding. Please provide evidence on the Evidence Post for any crossover nominations before nominating, and nominate with a "fandom" tag consisting of the two crossed over canons names separated by a "/", eg "Bones/Sleepy Hollow".

Recursive (fanworks) fandoms are eligible with permission from their creator. Please provide a link to a public statement from the creator giving permission for recursive works on the Evidence Post for any recursive nominations before nominating.

Characters

Please nominate only single characters in this field. Nominations for groups or relationships will be rejected.

Please disambiguate your character nominations to indicate the fandom you’ve nominated as clearly as possible. For example, if nominating Darth Vader for the TV show Obi-Wan Kenobi, nominate as "Darth Vader (Kenobi TV)" rather than simply “Darth Vader (Star Wars)”. If nominating Amos Burton under “The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey”, you could nominate him as "Amos Burton (Expanse Books)".

Mods will ensure that you can select original characters by adding the tags "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" and "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" to each fandom in the tag set. You do not have to nominate these tags. However, if the gender of original characters is particularly important to you and you strongly prefer to only create for or request particular genders, please use one of your character slots to nominate specific genders, such as "Original Non-binary Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" or "Original Female Character(s) (Name of Fandom)". Otherwise the choice of gender will be up to the creator, not the requester.

Please do not nominate any other kind of specific original characters. Please incorporate any canon-related specifics into your worldbuilding tags, for example, "WB: Surface Dwarf Culture (Dragon Inquisition)" or “WB: How halfbloods balance two worlds (Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling)”.

Worldbuilding

Tags for fandom-specific worldbuilding elements should be nominated in the Relationship field. Use "WB: " at the start of each of these tags, and disambiguate with the fandom name at the end (for example: "WB: Belter Culture and Customs (Expanse TV)"). Do not nominate any type of actual relationship (/ or &); any such nominations will be rejected. You may wish to look at previous tagsets for ideas; see 2025’s tag set here, and previous tagsets can be found through the parent collection pages for v2 and v1.

Worldbuilding tags for fandoms that overlap closely with the real world should concentrate on topics where a creator has leeway to make things up rather than being predominantly researchable. For example, “WB: Casino Security (Ocean’s Eleven)” would not be accepted, but “WB: Urban Legends about the Bellagio Heist (Ocean’s Eleven)” would be.