DJI is paying for footage again. The drone maker’s All For Passion Challenge offers a $10,000 grand prize for the best sports or action video shot on the Avata 360, its 8K 360-degree FPV drone, with entries open through September 30 and winners announced October 28.

The full pool is $25,000: one $10,000 grand prize, two $5,000 runner-up prizes, and five $1,000 third-place awards. DroneXL has tracked this drone since the first promotional shots leaked last November, and a creator contest was the predictable next move for a product DJI built around reframable, share-ready footage. What makes this one worth a closer look is less the money than the machine underneath it, and what it took to get that machine into American hands.

DJI Puts $25,000 In Prizes Behind The All For Passion Challenge

The All For Passion Challenge awards one $10,000 grand prize, two $5,000 runner-up prizes, and five $1,000 third-place awards for sports and action videos shot on the DJI Avata 360. Entries close September 30, and DJI will announce the winners on October 28.

The mechanics are simple, according to DJI’s contest announcement. Film a sport with the Avata 360, add the official “DJI AVATA 360 | ALL FOR PASSION” watermark, and publish on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or TikTok with the hashtags #allforpassion, #djiavata, and #avata360. Then email the post link, platform, and publication date to [email protected]. There is no cap on entries, so a productive summer can produce a stack of tickets.

Eligible activities run from mountain biking and surfing to skiing, climbing, football, and swimming. If it moves fast enough to be worth chasing with a cinewhoop, it qualifies.

DJI has been seeding the campaign since at least July 23, when it announced Sports Series Stickers for the challenge on X. And for scale: this is pocket change next to the SkyPixel contest and its prize pot of almost $200,000, but SkyPixel spans DJI’s whole catalog. This one exists to sell exactly one aircraft.

Entries Compete On Quality, Not Follower Count

DJI will judge entries on three criteria: video quality, creativity, and influence. Follower counts are not one of them. Participants keep copyright, but entering grants DJI a worldwide, perpetual license to use, edit, and share submissions for promotional purposes with attribution.

That license language is standard for manufacturer contests, and it is still worth reading before you upload your best work. You keep ownership. DJI gets to run your footage in its marketing forever, credited, without paying you beyond any prize you happen to win.

The judging split deserves one honest note. Influence still sits on the scorecard, so reach is not irrelevant, but it is one factor of three. A small account with a genuinely original edit has a real path here, which is more than most social contests offer.

The Avata 360 Reached US Buyers Late And Through Amazon

The Avata 360 launched globally on March 26, 2026, but American pilots waited until April for stock to reach Amazon. DJI squeezed the drone through FCC certification in November 2025, 34 days before the window for new Chinese drone approvals closed for the US market.

The drone itself earned the attention. It shoots 8K/60fps HDR 360-degree video and 120MP stills from 1-inch-equivalent sensors, flies for about 23 minutes, weighs 455 grams, and carries DJI’s O4+ transmission rated to 12.4 miles (20 kilometers). Our launch coverage has the full spec rundown.

Getting it to US customers was the hard part. The Avata 360 cleared its FCC hurdle with 34 days to spare before the December 23 cutoff for new approvals. Even then, DJI’s own US store never opened orders at launch. American buyers watched Europe and Asia fly for weeks until sales opened through Amazon in April, where the Fly More Combo with the RC 2 sells for $979. That counts as a win in 2026, which tells you something.

So the contest’s premise carries a quiet catch for its American audience: to chase DJI’s prize money, you first need a drone that took a regulatory squeaker and a retail workaround to buy at all.

DroneXL’s Take

A $25,000 video contest is good marketing, and I have no problem with DJI running one. My problem is the backdrop: American pilots can win money filming a drone that reached them late, through third parties, while Washington debates whether they may buy the next one.

Yes, the security concerns behind the FCC’s Covered List push are not invented. Federal agencies have warned about Chinese drone data risks for years, and those questions deserve real answers. But a certification deadline that nearly kept a consumer camera drone out of the country, followed by a months-long retail scramble, protects incumbents more than it protects anyone’s data. The pilots paying for that are American.

The dates tell the story better than I can. Entries close September 30. The Section 232 tariff decision on drones lands September 3, right in the middle of the submission window. Whatever comes out of that decision will say more about the Avata 360’s future in this country than any leaderboard DJI publishes on October 28. Watch September 3, not the contest.

Source: DJI

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.