One of South Baldwin County’s signature annual gatherings is looking for the image that will define it. The South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce has issued a formal call for artists to design the official artwork for the 23rd Annual Gulf Coast Hot Air Balloon Festival, to be held in Foley in 2027. The winning design will appear on the festival’s t-shirt and poster, and the chamber has set a firm deadline of Thursday, October 1, 2026.
The Terms of the Competition
Artists may deliver submissions in person to the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce at 200 N. Alston St., Foley, AL 36535, or mail them to P.O. Box 1117, Foley, AL 36536. Questions and delivery confirmations go to Rachel Spear, Director of Events, at (251) 943-5550 or by email at rachel@southbaldwinchamber.com.
The design brief is specific. Artwork must engage the festival’s core themes of hot air balloons, art, music and the Gulf Coast. Every submission must incorporate three required text elements:
- The words “23rd Annual Gulf Coast Hot Air Balloon Festival”
- The year 2027
- “Foley, AL”
The finished commissioned poster may not exceed 18 inches wide by 24 inches tall. The selected artist receives a one-time payment of $500 and, in exchange, relinquishes ownership of the work. Upon selection, the design becomes the sole property of the Gulf Coast Hot Air Balloon Festival and the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce, which may use it as it sees fit without further compensation to the artist.
A Line Drawn on Artificial Intelligence
The most striking element of the call is the chamber’s flat prohibition on machine-generated work. Only original, human-made artwork will be considered. No AI-generated designs will be accepted, full stop.
That stance places the festival among a growing number of arts competitions, festivals and publications that have moved to write explicit human-authorship requirements into their submission rules. Image generation tools have made it trivial to produce a polished, festival-ready poster in minutes, which has forced organizers of small regional competitions into an awkward position: the prize money and the visibility are meant to support working artists in the community, not to reward whoever typed the best prompt. Ruling AI out is the simplest way to keep the commission doing what it was intended to do.
Artists considering a submission should take the requirement at face value. A competition that bothers to write the prohibition into its call is a competition prepared to enforce it.
Weighing the Deal
The commission is a full rights transfer. For $500, the chamber acquires the artwork outright and can reproduce it on merchandise, signage, advertising and promotional material without paying royalties. That is a common arrangement for event artwork, but it is worth understanding clearly before submitting. What the artist gains in return is exposure of a particular kind: the image will be printed on shirts worn across the region, hung in storefronts, and reproduced in festival marketing for a year. For an emerging artist building a regional profile along the Gulf Coast, that reach carries real value.
The Festival Itself
The Gulf Coast Hot Air Balloon Festival has become one of the best-known annual events in South Baldwin County, drawing visitors from across the Gulf Coast region to Foley. It is built around the spectacle of balloons inflating and lifting off at dawn and glowing after dark, but it has grown into a broader celebration of art, music and coastal culture. The 2027 edition marks the 23rd time the community has staged it.
Events of that longevity tend to develop a visual identity, and the annual poster is a large part of how that identity is built and refreshed. Collectors accumulate the shirts. Businesses frame the posters. The image the chamber selects this fall will be the face of the festival for a year.
Next Steps for Interested Artists
Artists across the region are encouraged to submit, and the chamber has framed the call broadly rather than restricting it to Baldwin County residents. Anyone planning to enter should contact the chamber well before the October 1 deadline to confirm delivery requirements and any additional specifications.
For the region’s painters, illustrators and designers, this is a rare, clearly defined commission with a published brief and a real deadline. The work of interpreting a sky full of balloons over Foley is now open.