Public Voting: All You Need to Know

Public Voting for the SXSW Sydney 2025 Conference is open from March 17 to March 20, via our website.  
Here’s everything you need to know about how and why you should take part.  

What is Public Voting?

Public voting is a key part of how we curate the SXSW Sydney Conference program. It allows prospective attendees, like you, to vote on the sessions you find most interesting and valuable. This process helps guide the content of our October event.

Those planning to attend SXSW Sydney 2025 vote on which sessions, speakers, and workshops they believe we should include in the Conference.

Public Voting is just one stage in a three-part evaluation process. Afterwards over 100 industry experts provide their feedback. This is followed by a period of final curation by the conference team, to balance every track.

Public Voting is important to prospective participants - it’s an opportunity to showcase a session to the wider SXSW Sydney community, the first step in building interest in a session, should it be accepted. SXSW Sydney provide assets to help each prospective participant promote their session.  

While Public Voting doesn’t guarantee acceptance, it plays a significant role in the evaluation process.

How Does Public Voting Work?

• Voting Platform: The platform allows users to filter sessions by track (e.g., workshops, panels) and format, making it easy to explore sessions that spark interest.

• Votes are Limited: You can Vote for a particular session only once every 24 hours.

• Open to Everyone: You don’t need to log in to vote this year – the platform is open to anyone.

• Unique URL: Every session has a unique URL to share to encourage voting.  

• Opt out of Public Voting: if you don’t want your session to be part of Public Voting, email conference@sxswsydney.com.

Timeline and Key Dates

• Session Select Submissions Deadline: Sunday, March 23

• Public Voting: March 17 – March 31. Sessions submitted after public voting starts (but before March 23) will be added to the platform on Thurs 20 March and Tues 25^th March, if not before.  

• Notification of Results: June  

If you have any other questions check out our Conference Submission page FAQs or reach out to the conference team at conference@sxswsydney.com