All But Romance Fanwork Exchange

Welcome to the All But Romance Fanwork Exchange, a gen multifandom gift exchange run on AO3 focused on all kinds of platonic relationships - familial, friendships, colleagues etc. During the exchange you have to create at least a 2k fic meeting the requirements, or at least a clean and detailed lineart.

We're focusing on fanworks with no romantic or sexual content, so for the purpose of this exchange we decided not to accept relationships indicated by a / (slash).


THIS YEAR WE'RE STARTING A LITTLE EARLIER! 

Schedule:
Nominations: 6 April – 16 April 2026 (in your timezone) (in your timezone)
Signups: 20 April – 3 May 2026 (in your timezone)  (in your timezone)
>> Soft check-in: 15 – 21 June 2026 (in your timezone)  (in your timezone)
Default deadline: 5 July (in your timezone)
Posting deadline: 2 August 2026 (in your timezone)
Work reveal: 14 August 2026 (in your timezone)
Creator reveal: 21 August 2026 (in your timezone)


NOTE THE CHANGE OF THE TIMEZONE THIS YEAR! 
All deadlines are at 20:00 UTC+1 | CEST

Subcollection 2026   |    Nomination Guidelines  |   Tagset   |   Rules and Guidelines   |   AO3 Magic App (with easy access to sign-ups)    |    Treats for Pinch Hitters TBA


The mod e-mail is: allbutromance@gmail.com
You can catch us on tumblr.


There have been some changes in the rules this year, for the full breakdown please check out full posts (nomination guidelines and rules and guidelines), most important ones:

• Nominations

Where applicable, please use the canonical tag (so whatever shows from the drop-down menu on ao3)
There were changes to nominating Original Works (regarding how to tag characters)
We're allowing Recursive fandoms now
Nominating multiple characters in one tag limited to 4 characters (groups like Thorin's Company where you know who's in the group are still ok)

• Rules and guidelines

From this year, we'll be enforcing a ban for defaulting after the default deadline, see details in the rules and guidelines. To be unbanned, you will have to do a make-up assignment.
Extensions changed from 48 hours to 7 days.
There will be a soft check-in (not mandatory) this is for this round only for now.
We'll have Do-Not-Match requests for max. 2 users THIS IS ON TRIAL BASIS, if it doesn't work or is too much work for us, we'll not do this next round. To do this, you'll need to put the direct link to their ao3 in the space provided in your sign-up).

Assignment swaps
We'll allow assignment swaps this year! After you receive your assignment, you can swap it for a pinch hit at any point (no explanation needed). You'll need to comment under the PH post when it comes out/email us, state you want to swap, add your ao3, your current recipient, your email (if you're commenting), and which PH you'd like instead.