Project Loved is the voting platform that promotes beatmaps to the Loved category. It is run primarily by the Project Loved Team.
Beatmaps are moved to Loved by a nomination and voting process.
Members of the Project Loved Team called captains regularly nominate beatmaps for a specific game mode. Almost always, these sets come from submissions from the osu! community. The current Loved submission forms and listings can be found via the following links:
Note: If your access to Google Forms is restricted, you may also contact any of the Project Loved Team members to have a map submitted on your behalf.
Nominated mapsets are then posted to the Project Loved forum, where community members may vote whether they want the mapset to be Loved or not. Maps reaching a specified threshold percentage of "Yes" votes at their polls' end time will be moved to the Loved category.
There are some very minimal criteria that need to be met for beatmaps to be nominated for Loved. Captains consider a beatmap eligible for the Loved category if:
However, despite nearly all Pending and Work-in-progress maps meeting these criteria, few are voted into the Loved category due to the more selective nomination and voting requirements.
Beatmaps entering the Loved category are required to follow some additional rule sets:
Any problems with these rules are usually sorted out while the map is up for voting.
There are no strict rules governing which maps a captain must nominate for Loved, but generally the nominated maps are very well known and appreciated by the community (as the title "Loved" implies). Sometimes a mapset will also be preferred if it is significantly older than others or contains beatmaps with unique and high-quality mapping styles.
All of the organisation and planning for Project Loved is done in the #osu-loved channel of the osu!dev Discord server. There is also a #project-loved channel in the osu! Community Discord server. Any questions, concerns, or suggestions may be directed there.