There are two judging rounds:

• Round 1: The comedy industry scores the newcomer entrants and the top 20 will be eligible to perform at the Savanna Newcomer Showcase.
• Round 2: After the showcase, the industry scores the 20 newcomers that performed, and the top five become the nominees in this category.

Qualifying Conditions:

• This category is for stand-up comedians only, not social media comedians. 
• Entry timeline: You need to have a maximum of three years of professional stand-up experience ie. If you started getting paid for stand up gigs from October 2022 or later you are eligible for this category.
• You can only perform at the Savanna Newcomer Showcase once. Only enter this category if you believe you are ready. If you are still in your first year, we recommend waiting until you have reached your second or third year.
• If you’ve performed at the Savanna Newcomer Showcase before, you cannot enter this category again. 
• You need to be available to perform at The Savanna Newcomer Showcase at the end of January. If you will not be available, please rather enter next year if you still make the max three-year experience cut-off. 
• You’ll need to have performed 80% of your comedy work within South Africa over the last three years.
• The awards are run on honesty, we trust you to only enter categories that you actually qualify for. 

What to submit:

• Professional means that you have been paid for your performance, so you’ll need to supply a confirmation from an established comedian that will vouch that you have been paid to do comedy. We’d like to make your life easy, a screenshot of a WhatsApp confirmation will do the trick.
• You’ll need to submit a link to a video of you performing stand-up for an audience, maximum two-minutes long. If it’s longer than two minutes, the industry will only watch the first two minutes when voting.  
• You’ll also need to submit a headshot and bio.  

What the industry’s looking for when judging:  

• As with all the categories, we have comedians voting for comedians. 
• The comedy industry is looking for the newcomer that’s taking the industry by storm. Someone who’s got promise to be the next big thing. Someone that’s going to be a household name in years to come. 
• Whilst the entry content will be viewed from whichever social media platform you direct us to, please note that it does not need to be the most widely shared or have the most engagements and impressions, as it’s your content and delivery that’ll be taken into account, not your number of followers.