Inviting an Artist After a Call Closes

An artist emails the morning after your deadline. Their files were too big, or they were in hospital, or they simply lost track of the date, and you want to let them in. Reopening the call would invite everyone else back in with them.

A late-submission invitation solves that. It opens a private window for one named artist, on a call that has already closed, without changing anything the public sees.

Sending an invitation

Go to Admin → Calls → your call → Submissions and press Invite late submission. Owners and admins can send these; other roles cannot.

The dialog asks for:

Artist email. This is the only required field, and it is what the invitation is bound to.
Expires. How long the private window stays open, defaulting to a week from now. It must be in the future and no more than a year out.
Max submissions. How many pieces this artist may submit, defaulting to one, up to twenty.
Override the late fee, if your call charges one and you want to waive it for this artist. Tick the box and enter 0. See the note on fee overrides below.
Note to the artist (optional), which is included in the email.

Press Send invitation. The artist is emailed straight away, and the invitation appears in the Existing invites list underneath.

If the email cannot be sent, the invitation is still created and you are told to resend it from the list.

When an invitation actually works

The invitation only grants access to a call that is genuinely closed to everyone else: either its status is closed, or it is still open but its deadline has passed. On a call that is still accepting submissions normally, the invitation does nothing, because the artist can just submit. It also does nothing on a draft, a paused call, or an archived call, and you cannot issue one on an archived call at all.

The invitation does not reopen the call, does not change its dates, and is invisible to everyone except the artist you sent it to.

What the artist receives

The email is headed You've been invited to submit after the deadline and explains that your organization has opened a personal window on a call that has closed to the public. It states the expiry date in your organization's timezone, says whether a late fee applies or has been waived, includes your note, and carries a Submit your work button.

The link is personal. It does not sign anyone in, so the artist signs in as usual first. It only works for the invited email address, so forwarding it to a friend does nothing. When they open it they land on the normal submission form with a banner at the top telling them who invited them, when the invitation expires, and how many submissions they have left.

Two limits that still apply

The invitation lets the artist past the closed deadline. It does not exempt them from anything else:

Your per-artist submission cap still applies. If the call allows three submissions per artist and this artist already used three, the invitation will not let them add a fourth. Raise the call's limit if that is what you meant.
The call must be activated. An invitation cannot resurrect a call that was never paid for and published.

Fee overrides

Use the override to waive the late fee by entering 0. That works end to end: the artist is told the fee is waived and is not charged.

Entering a non-zero override amount is not reliable, because checkout recalculates the fee from the call's own settings. If you want this artist to pay a different amount, change the call's fee or waive it and invoice them separately.

Resending and revoking

The Existing invites list shows each invitation with a status of Active, Not sent, Used, Expired, or Revoked, along with how many of its submissions have been used and when it expires.

Resend emails a fresh link. It also replaces the old one, so the link you sent before stops working immediately and the artist must use the new email. Resending does not extend the expiry date or reset the submission count. If the deadline you gave has already passed, send a new invitation rather than resending this one.

Revoke shuts the invitation down at once. The link dies immediately, even for an artist who already has the form open, and a revoked invitation cannot be brought back. To let the artist in after all, issue a new invitation.

Both actions ask you to confirm before they run.

When an invitation runs out

Once the invitation is used up, expires, or is revoked, the artist gets the ordinary closed-call page if they follow the link again, and the list shows the invitation as used or expired. An artist who was mid-submission when it lapsed is told the invitation is no longer available, and their work is not submitted. If that was a mistake, send them a new invitation.