TaleWorlds is putting some serious money behind Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord modding.
The developer has announced a new War Sails Modding Competition with more than €30,000 in prizes, giving Bannerlord creators a reason to start experimenting with the naval side of the game. The competition opened on August 14 and runs until November 22, 2026, with Nexus Mods and ModDB involved alongside TaleWorlds.
This isn’t one giant contest where every creator is fighting for the same prize, either. TaleWorlds has split the event into three categories covering full mods, ship creation, and custom battle scenes.
War Sails Modders Can Build Entirely New Experiences
The biggest category is the Conversion Mod Contest, and this is probably where things could get interesting.
Creators can develop total or partial conversion mods that use features introduced with War Sails, including naval campaign travel and naval battles. That leaves a pretty wide door open. Different historical periods, fantasy settings, alternate versions of Calradia, or something completely unexpected could all fit the brief.
Bannerlord already has a modding community willing to take the game far beyond its original setting. Giving those creators official tools built around ships and naval warfare adds another layer they haven’t had much room to explore before.
And with actual prize money involved, some ambitious projects could come out of this.
Shipbuilders Get Their Own 3D Art Competition
Not everybody wants to build an entire conversion mod.
For artists who would rather spend their time modeling ships, the 3D Art Contest is focused specifically on creating vessels. TaleWorlds isn’t restricting entrants to one particular class or historical period. Small rowboats, merchant ships, military vessels, and more imaginative designs are all on the table.
That freedom matters more than it sounds. War Sails doesn’t have to stay locked into the visual identity of its existing factions once modders get involved. A Roman fleet, enormous fantasy warships, Viking-inspired vessels, or something that looks completely out of place in Calradia could potentially emerge from the competition.
Bannerlord modders tend to run with an idea once the tools exist. Ships could be the next rabbit hole.
There’s Also a Contest for Coastal Battle Scenes
The third category moves away from ships themselves and focuses on where those ships end up.
The Scene Design Contest asks creators to build Seaborne Village Raid scenes centered around warriors arriving from the water and attacking coastal settlements. The goal is essentially to capture the messiness of a beach assault: vessels hitting the shoreline, troops pouring onto land, defenders responding, and the surrounding environment helping sell the battle.
For players, this category could end up producing some of the most immediately noticeable content from the competition.
A new ship is cool. A completely new location where that ship crashes into shore while dozens of soldiers start fighting is a little harder to ignore.
Some Competition Entries Will Live Beyond the Contest
There’s another detail here that could matter long after the prize money is handed out.
TaleWorlds says submitted vessels and Seaborne Village Raid scenes will be released as open-source resources, allowing other War Sails modders to use them as building blocks for future projects. Conversion mods created during the event could naturally stick around as playable projects as well.
So the competition isn’t only about picking a handful of winners.
It could dump a fresh collection of ships, maps, ideas, and reusable assets into the Bannerlord modding scene all at once. One competition entry could end up becoming a piece of a completely different mod months later.
That’s probably the more interesting part.
Community Voting Begins After Submissions Close
Creators have until November 22, 2026 to finish their entries. Community voting is scheduled to follow later in November, giving Bannerlord players a chance to discover and vote on the projects created during the event.
TaleWorlds developers will also take part in judging, with the final winners expected to be announced in January 2027.
That’s a fairly long submission window, which makes sense considering what TaleWorlds is asking people to build. A ship model is one thing. A polished conversion using naval combat is quite another.
War Sails May Give Bannerlord Modding Another Push
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord has always been a game where mods can become almost as important as the official content. War Sails gives creators another major system to tear apart, rebuild, and push somewhere TaleWorlds probably didn’t intend.
Throwing more than €30,000 into the mix certainly won’t hurt.
The first few entries may be relatively predictable — historical ships, expanded naval encounters, new coastal maps. Give the community enough time, though, and someone will inevitably build something ridiculous.
Bannerlord modding tends to work that way.