Three things have to be true at the same moment for a competition to sit in the Featured strip at the top of uni.xyz/competitions. If yours is missing, one of the three has failed. And even when all three hold, the strip is served from a cache, so a change made now is not visible now.
The three conditions
- The competition is public. Anything not yet published is excluded before the featured filter even runs.
- UNI has marked it featured. Featured is not a setting in the competition editor, and no organizer can switch it on. It is set by the UNI team on our side, so it is something to ask for rather than something to look for.
- At least one deadline has not yet ended. Any deadline counts: registration, submission, voting, jury or results. The strip looks for a deadline whose end date is still in the future.
A competition can drop off with nobody touching it
The third condition is the one that changes on its own. The featured flag stays set, but the moment the last deadline's end date passes, the competition stops matching and leaves the strip. Nothing is unset and nothing is emailed. If a competition you expected to see has just vanished, check its deadline dates before assuming the flag was removed.
Allow up to six hours
The Featured response is cached for six hours. Marking a competition featured, extending a deadline, or unmarking it, all reach the strip only when that cache expires. Up to six hours can pass before you see the change, and reloading the page does not shorten it. This is the most common reason an organizer reports that featuring did not work.
Featured is only the strip
Not being featured does not hide anything. The competition is still in the listing below the strip, still in search, and still reachable at its own address. What each tab on the competitions page shows covers where else it appears.