Circa Survivor 2025: $15 Million Record Prize Pool & New Contest

Circa Survivor VI returns with a record-breaking prize pool for 2025. Get the full contest breakdown, rules, and insights from 2024 winners.

Circa Survivor VI is officially on the calendar, and Circa Sports has set a new benchmark for the largest guaranteed prize pool in NFL survivor contest history. With big money on the line, tough decisions every week, and no rake, Circa Survivor has blown up into a national favorite.

2025 is shaping up to be the biggest year yet, not just because of the higher prize pool, but also because of the debut of Circa Grandissimo, a new high-stakes version for elite players ready to put $100,000 on the line.

What Is the Circa Survivor 2025 Guaranteed Prize Pool?

For the 2025 season, Circa has raised the bar once again, guaranteeing a prize pool of $15 million, a new record that cements Circa Survivor as the largest NFL survivor contest in the world.

Importantly, that guarantee stands regardless of how many entries are submitted. And if history is any guide, the contest won’t just meet that number, it will likely surpass it.

Circa Survivor Prize Pool History

Year	Guarantee	Final Prize Pool	Entries	Winners	Payout Per Winner
2024	$10 Million	$14.266 Million	14,266	8	$1,783,250
2023	$8 Million	$9.267 Million	9,267	4	$2,316,750
2022	$6 Million	$6.133 Million	6,133	2	$3,066,500
2021	$6 Million	$7.00 Million	4,080	5	$1,400,000
2020	$1 Million	$2.39 Million	1,390	35	$68,285

As this table shows, Circa has exceeded its prize guarantee by a strong margin in the last two years. With strong momentum and growing national awareness, expectations are high that 2025 will break both the entry and prize pool records again.

How Circa Survivor Works

The contest format is relatively straightforward:

• Registration Opens: May 23, 2025
• Entry Fee: $1,000 per entry
• Entry Limit: 10 entries per person
• No Rake: 100% of entry fees go to the prize pool
• Format: Pick one NFL team to win straight-up each week. No spreads. No repeats. One wrong pick and you’re out.

There are 20 contest weeks, including:

• A standalone Thanksgiving/Black Friday week
• A standalone Christmas Week (Thursday through Saturday games)

To stay in the competition, contestants must plan around these unique scheduling wrinkles and pick a new team to win every week.

Pick Submission Rules & Deadlines

• Nevada Residents: Register and submit picks via Circa sportsbook kiosks or the Circa Sports app.
• Non-Nevada Residents: Must register in person and use a proxy service to submit weekly picks.

Weekly Deadlines:

• Regular Weeks: Saturday by 4:00 PM PT or before kickoff of your selected game (whichever comes first)
• Thanksgiving/Black Friday: Picks due Wednesday at 10:00 PM PT
• Christmas Week: Picks due by 9:00 AM PT on Thursday, Dec. 25

New in 2025: Circa Grandissimo ($100K Entry Fee)

New for 2025, Circa Sports is raising the bar once again with the launch of Circa Grandissimo—an exclusive, high-stakes NFL survivor contest designed for the boldest players in the game.

What Makes Circa Grandissimo Different?

There are three key differences between Circa Grandissimo and the traditional Circa NFL Survivor:

• $100,000 Entry Fee: This is not for the faint of heart. Every entry costs six figures, setting a new high-water mark for NFL survivor contests.

• 2-Entry Limit Per Person: Unlike the main contest (which allows up to 10 entries), Grandissimo is capped at two entries per participant. That levels the playing field and puts even more pressure on every decision.

• $1.5 Million Guaranteed Prize Pool: Circa is putting $1.5 million on the line to kick things off, regardless of how many entries are submitted. Just like Circa Survivor, there’s no rake, and every dollar beyond the guarantee goes straight into the pot.

The other rules that apply to the Circa NFL Survivor contest (noted above) also apply to Circa Grandissimo.

What We Learned from 2024 Winners

Eight entries successfully navigated all 20 weeks to split the $14.266 million prize pool of the 2024 Circa NFL Survivor Contest. Their success wasn’t random; it came down to smart strategy and well-timed contrarianism.

We’ve compiled a deep dive into their winning paths in our companion feature: How the 2024 Circa Survivor Winners Survived All 20 Weeks

In that article, we explore:

• Which teams were prioritized for holiday weeks
• How winners avoided trap games and major upsets
• Where their pick behavior differed from the field

Circa Survivor VI is once again set to raise the stakes…literally. With a rake-free model and the biggest guaranteed prize pool in survivor contest history, this is as good as it gets for fans of high-stakes football strategy.

If you can survive 20 weeks of chaos, upset alerts, and holiday headaches, your reward could be a piece of a prize pool pushing past $15 million.