Search "freelance life" and you'll get a laptop on a beach. Search "freelance burnout" and you'll get a warning. Neither one is even close to painting the full picture.
After ten years of building tools for independent professionals, we've noticed something: nobody tells this story, the hustle, the grind, the freedom behind solo work life better than the people living it.
You know, client call taken at the kitchen table because it's the only room with decent light. The invoice that's forty days late and the very polite email chasing it. The eleven browser tabs open but none of them the actual work.
That's the version we want to see. So we're asking the people who live it to share it.
Xoloverse is back — and this year it's a competition. Show us your real solo work life and win your share of a €7,000 prize pool.
What is Xoloverse?
Xoloverse is Xolo's annual celebration of independent work. The format changes every year but the point doesn't.
In 2025, for our 10th birthday, it was a free one-day online summit — nine sessions on money, pricing, taxes and borderless business, with nearly 900 freelancers joining live from across Europe and beyond.
This year we're handing over the microphone. Xoloverse Open Call: Next Top Independent is a talent-show-style open call for the freelancers, solopreneurs and small business owners who make independent work happen. You submit a piece of original creative work. Our jury and the public decide who wins.
The two categories
Pick whichever fits what you want to show. You can enter either one.
🎬 Behind the Scenes
The unpolished reality of running your own thing. What the day actually contains once you take out the highlight reel.
A few starting points, if you want them:
- The real workspace tour — including the parts that would normally stay out of frame
- A day in the life, told honestly, hour by hour
- The admin pile: invoicing at midnight, the tax deadline, the receipt you can't find
- The setup held together with tape, a desk lamp and conviction
🎤 The Hustle / The Pitch
How you sell it. The part where you have to convince someone that you're worth it — and the strange things that involves when you're a company of one.
A few starting points, if you want them:
- Pitch yourself in sixty seconds, as if we're the client
- The cold outreach that worked, or the one that spectacularly didn't
- Explaining what you actually do to a relative who still isn't sure it's a real job
- Your origin story: the moment you decided to stop asking permission
Consider the above prompts, not briefs. There's no checklist here and nothing on those lists scores you the points — they're just somewhere to start if the blank page is the problem. If you've got an idea nobody would have thought to suggest, that's the star entry.
The prize: €7,000, three winners
The pool is split across three winners:
- Two jury picks, chosen by our three judges
- One public vote winner, chosen by everyone
Every approved entry gets its own shareable voting link. Send it to your network, your group chat, your clients, your mum — the public prize is genuinely up for grabs, and the people who rally hardest tend to win it.
Any format counts
Short video, photo, meme or mixed media content. Filmed on a phone is fine. Filmed on a phone is, frankly, on brand.
The idea beats the production budget. We are not looking for the most expensive entry. We're looking for the one that makes someone stop scrolling and think yes, that's exactly it.
If you've been putting this off because you don't have a camera, a crew or a lighting setup: that was never the requirement.
Meet the judges
Three people who between them have seen independent work from every angle — building an audience from nothing, engineering things people actually share, and spending a decade removing the admin from all of it.
Kaja Aulik
You don't have enough problems for all of her solutions.
Kaja understands what makes people stop, react and share. Her growth hacking and brand experience ranges from early-stage startups and unicorns to global music artists and films. She is at her best when turning unexpected ideas into cultural moments, ranging from IRL, Twitch and Reddit stunts to BuzzFeed-worthy April Fool's or social-first campaigns. She has awards in Estonia and Germany for her creative work.
Kaja is a hands-on practitioner who constantly experiments with new formats, platforms and trends. She tests ideas on her personal account, @auklik, where her content has earned millions of views, and applies those insights to campaigns built for participation, conversation and organic reach.
Impress her with your most "oscar-worthy-niche-indie-my-mom-is-going-to-cry-and-I'm-thanking-my-three-cats-for-their-unwavering-support" entry.
Luzu
@luzu didn't wait for anyone's permission: he pointed a camera at himself, hit record, and turned "doing his own thing" into one of Spain's biggest creative journeys. He left a production job to bet on his own ideas and built several channels from the ground up, long before "creator" was a real job.
Today he's one of the most established and versatile creators in the Spanish-speaking world, with tens of millions of followers. But what makes him the right judge for Xoloverse isn't the numbers: he's living proof of what building something on your own really takes, reinvention and chaos included. He knows polished from real because he's lived both.
Impress him with your most "no-crew-no-budget-no-permission-just-an-idea-that-wouldn't-leave-me-alone" submission.
Mikko Teerenhovi
Mikko is a product guy turned CEO, which means he still thinks in features and streamlining long after the job description stopped requiring it. He runs Xolo with a single goal: making independent work less of an administrative nightmare for freelancers and business owners across Europe.
Originally from Finland. Reliably in black. A family man with a soft spot for art history, a good old Johnny Cash classic and an unshakeable confidence in his own karaoke performance. Trust Mikko to say less than everyone else in the room, but to be the funniest person in it.
Impress him with your most "my-own-boss-my-own-IT-department-my-own-worst-client" entry.
How to enter
- Go to xoloverse.xolo.io and pick your category
- Submit your entry — short video, photo, meme or mixed media
- Verify your email so we know you're real
- Get your voting link once your entry is approved, and start sharing it
- Wait for the verdict — the jury picks two winners, the public vote picks the third
Entries close October 15th. Winners announced October 21st.
Frequently asked questions
Who can enter? Anyone aged 18 or over who works independently, creates their own work or runs their own business. You enter as an individual, even if you also work through a company. You don't need to be a Xolo customer, and it's free to enter.
Do I have to be in Europe? No — the campaign is open internationally. A small number of countries and territories are excluded for legal, sanctions and payment reasons; the terms list them.
When is the deadline? 15 October 2026 at 23:59 EEST. Entries and public voting close at the same moment, so an entry submitted on the last day has almost no time to gather votes. Earlier is better.
How many entries can I submit? Up to five, across either or both categories.
Do I need professional equipment? No. A phone is genuinely enough — the idea beats the production budget.
Can I use AI tools? Yes. AI-generated and AI-assisted entries are welcome, with a disclosure step if your entry is synthetic and looks real.
Can I build a meme from an existing image or clip? Only if you hold the rights to it or have permission. Memes are a welcome format, but the entry has to be your own original work — your own footage, original visuals, or licensed material you're entitled to use.
How does the public vote work? Each person can vote for your entry once per day, and can vote for as many different entries as they like. You can't vote for your own. Because it's daily, consistency beats one big push.
Can I promote my entry? Share it as widely as you like — organic sharing is the point. Paid ads for votes, bought votes, bots and fake accounts are not allowed, and we run an automated fraud check on every entry.
Who owns my entry? You do. You keep the copyright and give Xolo a non-exclusive licence to publish and use your entry for the campaign and related promotion. Anything we publish may stay online after the campaign ends.
Ready?
Ten years ago Xolo started with one idea: that running your own business shouldn't mean drowning in paperwork. Today we support thousands of independent professionals across Europe — running an e-Residency company, working as autónomo in Spain, starting a business in Italy.
What we've never done is ask you to show us what it's really like.
So: are you the Next Top Independent?
Entries close October 15th. Bring the chaos. 🎬