The UG IQ Contest program is Ultimate Guitar way of rewarding its most active users. UG is partnering with famous music brands to reward its top Users with guitars and other guitar-related gear on a regular basis.
Every time you submit a tablature, a chord sheet or an article to the site you receive UG IQ points. This list includes publishing articles, lessons and reviews, submitting chords, text tabs or Power Tabs / Guitar Pro tabs, receiving Trophies and your actions in the Pending Approval queue. The full list of actions that get you UG IQ points is available on the What is the UG IQ? page.
The UG IQ Special focuses on a specific type of contribution, while in UG IQ Contest any received points count. Focus of the UG IQ Special may vary from submitting Guitar Pro tabs to adding strumming patterns as an additional information to your tab.
All Ultimate Guitar users, except for administration, UG staff and banned users, are eligible to take part in all contests. UG IQ Contest grand prize winners are excluded from the next 2 Contests, however, they can participate in the UG IQ Special.
We try our best to make the UG IQ Contest weekly, however, it depends heavily on sponsorship.
Duration of the UG IQ Contests and Specials depend on current sponsor and schedule, one or two weeks is usually the case. The UG team posts an announcement in the UG news section and on The Forum for each contest.
99% of the time they start at 12:01 AM (EST) on Sunday and end at 11:59 PM (EST) on Saturday. Every contribution approved and published on ultimate-guitar.com during the contest counts (a type of contribution may vary for the UG IQ Special).
It is a common situation when the UG IQ Contest and the UG IQ Special are both active at the same time. UG IQ points that you get for special actions from UG IQ Special also count towards UG IQ Contest.
For example, December 4 - 17 is the UG IQ Contest and December 11 - 24 is the UG IQ Special (with a Guitar Pro tabs as the focus). If you submit a Guitar Pro tab then these points will count in both contests. If you submit a chord tab it will only count in the UG IQ Contest. The UG IQ Contest ends on Dec 17 but the UG IQ Special will still be running and points gained for Guitar Pro tabs during one contest still count for the second contest. In other words, if you have 120 points in the UG IQ Contest on Dec 17 they will be down to 0 on Dec 18. If you have 40 points in the UG IQ Special contest on Dec 17 you will still have 40 points in the Special contest on Dec 18.
Active contests are displayed on the ultimate-guitar.com main page. The UG IQ Top Users section reflects current top, while Featured contests section includes all UG IQ Specials available at this time.
There are two types of contests in terms of prizes, both depend on the sponsorship. It could be the first 3 places or 1 grand prize with 4 runner-ups.
All UG IQ Contest and Special prizes are the courtesy of our sponsors. We don’t choose them ourselves.
Delivery usually takes up to 4 weeks starting from a winner announcement, but it may take longer depending on country and customs policy. All prizes are sent out from the US.
We announce every contest in the UG news section and on the Forum.
The UG team may perform random checks of the contributions that were submitted during the contest. Depending on the severity of the violation and the amount of negative effect caused by it, the UG moderator team can issue a warning or ban the violator.
You can ask more information on the Forum in the UG IQ Contest and Special feedback.