2026 World Press Photo Contest
The winners of the 2026 World Press Photo Contest have been announced, showcasing a powerful lineup of photographs that capture defining stories around the world. From intimate moments of resilience and hidden traditions to stark scenes of global conflict, this year’s selections highlight photography’s enduring power to inform, move and inspire.
This year’s edition saw the submission of 57,376 photographs entered by 3747 photographers from 141 countries. The competition follows a regional model, introduced in 2021 to support greater diversity in stories and storytellers. Each region features three categories, highlighting single images, stories and long-term projects.
In addition to the already announced winners, the contest will select a Photo of the Year winner and two finalists, who will be announced on April 23. The overall winner will receive €10,000. They and two additional finalists will also each receive a Fujifilm GFX100 II with either two Fujinon GF lenses or the Fujifilm GFX100RF and one GF lens. The winning works will be featured in the World Press Photo’s annual traveling exhibition, which premieres in Amsterdam before visiting more than 60 locations worldwide.
The full collection of winning images, including the complete photo series, can be viewed on the World Press Photo website, alongside additional background details on each photographer, their project and this year’s exhibition schedule.
*Note: Complete technical information was not available for every image.
Africa – Singles
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Photographer: Ihsaan Haffejee, for GroundUp
Title: Joburg Ballet School
Caption: Young dancers from the Joburg Ballet School backstage at the Soweto Theatre during their year-end performance. Soweto, South Africa, 7 December 2025.
Story: In apartheid South Africa, ballet was the preserve of white culture, inaccessible to people of color. Today, the Joburg Ballet School offers subsidized training to children from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, with locations in Soweto, Alexandra, and Braamfontein. Parents describe seeing their children learn ballet as something they never thought possible.
Technical information: Sony a7 IV | 1/5000 sec | ISO 2500
Africa – Stories
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Photographer: Chantal Pinzi, Panos Pictures
Title: Farīsāt: Gunpowder’s Daughters
Caption: Noura attempts to control her horse after firing, the most dangerous part of the performance. Riders risk injury from gunpowder or falling and being trampled. Sidi Rahal, Morocco, 8 August 2025.
Story: Tbourida is a UNESCO-recognized Moroccan equestrian tradition dating back to the 16th century. Troupes gallop in unison, firing rifles in a choreographed performance of cavalry warfare. Historically excluded, female riders have fought for inclusion since Morocco’s 2004 family code reforms strengthened women’s legal rights. Today, seven all-female troupes now ride among some 300. These farīsāt (horsewomen) bear significant personal costs, funding their own horses, costumes, and gunpowder permits. Their perseverance stands as a powerful claim to women’s rightful place in Moroccan cultural heritage.
Technical information: Sony a7R V | Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II | 129mm | F5.6 1/1250 sec | ISO 500
Africa – Long-Term Projects
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Photographer: Mohamed Mahdy, Arab Documentary Photography Program
Title: Moon Dust
Caption: Amal holds an X-ray of her lungs. She moved to Moon Valley at three years old and developed asthma within months. Alexandria, Egypt, 31 January 2018.
Story: More than 30,000 residents of Wadi El-Qamar, also known as Moon Valley, in western Alexandria, Egypt, live less than 15 meters from a cement factory that fills their homes with toxic dust. Children are born with asthma. Families suffer from lung disease and irreversible respiratory damage. In 2016, the photographer – who lives nearby and has asthma himself – began documenting their stories and ongoing legal battles.
Technical information: Fujifilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF 18mm F2 R | F2.0 | 1/200 sec | ISO 250
Asia-Pacific and Oceania – Singles
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Photographer: Rob G. Green, National Geographic Society, Henry Luce Foundation
Title: Mountain Resident of Wanglang
Caption: A wild giant panda is captured by a camera trap in the Wanglang National Nature Reserve. Sichuan, China, 11 November 2025.
Story: Recent population estimates suggest that fewer than 2,000 pandas remain in the wild, and only a few dozen individuals live within Wanglang National Nature Reserve’s 323-square-kilometer territory. This rare sighting was made possible through a pilot exchange program between the National Geographic Society and wildlife biologists, aimed at supporting wildlife monitoring efforts and fostering cross-cultural cooperation in conservation. Established in 1965, Wanglang is one of China’s oldest wild panda nature reserves and today serves as a key site for education and scientific research collaboration within the larger Giant Panda National Park system.
Technical information: Canon EOS 6D Mark II | Canon EF 16-35mm F2.8L III USM | | 18mm| F2.8 | 1/160 | ISO 400
Asia-Pacific and Oceania – Stories
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Photographer: Matthew Abbott, Oculi, for The New York Times
Title: The Last Dolphin Hunters
Caption: Paralyzed for the past two years, Eddie Sua is confined to a hut that floods during high tides. He notes that without food and income from dolphin teeth, the community would starve. Fanalei Village, Fanalei Island, 16 February 2025.
Story: Fanalei, a low-lying island in the Solomon Islands, stands at a crossroads between contested tradition and a changing economy. For generations, dolphin hunting provided food and income, with dolphin teeth used as ritual currency for bride-price and other forms of local exchange. Today, as rising sea levels displace the community and threaten its future, seaweed farming is providing an economic alternative to the seasonal hunt. As seaweed farming expands, fewer people are available for the collective efforts upon which dolphin hunting depends. This story captures a community reshaped by environmental pressure and shifting traditions.
Technical information: Nikon Z9 | Nikon Nikkor Z 24-70mm F2.8 S | 24mm | F4 | 1/60 | ISO 2500
Asia-Pacific and Oceania – Long-Term Projects
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Photographer: Wu Fang
Title: Motherhood at 60
Caption: Sheng Hailin prepares for delivery at a hospital in Hefei. At 60 years old and over seven months pregnant, she faced pain, hemorrhaging, and other physical hardships to bring her twin daughters into the world. Hefei, Anhui Province, China, 25 May 2010.
Story: After the death of her only child, retired doctor Sheng Hailin sought in vitro fertilization treatment (IVF) and gave birth to twin girls named Zhizhi and Huihui at the age of 60. This story follows Sheng Hailin’s family over 15 years, offering a portrait that is both extraordinary and mundane, but always filled with enduring love. In China, Sheng Hailin is only one of many shīdú, parents who have lost their only child born during China’s one-child policy era.
Technical information: Nikon D3 | Nikon Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm F2.8G ED | F2.8 | 1/640 | ISO 1250
Europe – Singles
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Photographer: Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press
Title: Russian Attack on Kyiv
Caption: Valeria Syniuk (65) sits near her badly damaged home. She was asleep when a Russian missile destroyed the building opposite hers. Kyiv, Ukraine, 24 April 2025.
Story: On 24 April 2025, Russia launched one of the deadliest attacks on Kyiv since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Hours after international peace negotiations stalled again, missiles and drones struck at least five residential neighborhoods, killing 13 people and wounding 90. Russia’s intensifying air campaign continues to devastate life across the country, systematically targeting infrastructure, hospitals, and educational institutions. By December 2025, at least 14,775 civilians had been killed since the invasion began. April 2025 was the worst month for child casualties in nearly three years.
Technical information: Sony a1 | 1/160 sec
Europe – Stories
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Photographer: Brais Lorenzo, EFE, Revista 5W, El País
Title: Burned Land
Caption: The Larouco wildfire, the worst in Galicia’s recorded history, burns through the night as flames reach O Courel – a mountain range of great biodiversity. Sierra de O Courel, Galicia, Spain, 19 August 2025.
Story: 2025 was a record year for wildfires in Europe. More than 200,000 hectares burned across Galicia during Spain’s worst fire season in about three decades. The increasingly severe fires in this region are attributed to drought and heat intensified by climate change, rural depopulation, and shortsighted forest management policies, including the widespread planting of highly flammable non-native species. Born in Ourense, the photographer grew up with the smell of smoke every summer and has documented Galician wildfires since 2011.
Technical information: Nikon Z8 | Nikon Nikkor AF-S 24mm F1.4G | F4.5 | 30 sec | ISO 320
Europe – Long-Term Projects
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Photographer: William Keo, La Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Die Zeit
Title: Extramuros
Caption: Younes and Sandra embrace in a car close to Villepinte. Seine-Saint-Denis, France, 18 April 2024.
Story: In the peripheral neighborhoods of France’s banlieues, migrant families navigate postcolonial legacies, higher rates of unemployment, and structural inequality. France’s integration system requires migrants to culturally assimilate while prejudice persists, leaving communities caught between exclusion and belonging. Yet these communities are also spaces of creativity and resilience that shape contemporary French culture. Documenting his friends and family, the photographer – born to Cambodian refugees – portrays lives in which community and solidarity are the clearest markers of identity.
Technical information: LEICA M (Typ 240) | 1/90 sec
North and Central America – Singles
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Photographer: Jan Sonnenmair
Title: Portland Protests ICE
Caption: Officers from the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies clash with demonstrators outside an ICE processing center. The intense summer protests centered on opposing the administration’s escalating mass-deportation agenda. Portland, Oregon, United States, 24 June 2025.
Story: In 2025, the Trump administration shifted its immigration enforcement from the border to the US interior, aiming for 3,000 arrests per day and abandoning protections for schools, hospitals, courthouses, and places of worship. In response, Portland, a “sanctuary city” that prohibits its own state and local law forces to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, became a flashpoint for resistance. During the nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations in June, localized protests escalated into nightly clashes outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
Technical information: Sony a7 IV | 135mm | F3.2 | 1/320 sec | ISO 25,600
North and Central America – Stories
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Photographer: Ethan Swope, for Associated Press
Title: Los Angeles on Fire
Caption: The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds. The Los Angeles blazes inflicted between $28 and $53.8 billion in property damage, disrupting thousands of local businesses. Los Angeles, California, United States, 7 January 2025.
Story: In January 2025, severe drought and 100-mph (roughly 160-kph) Santa Ana winds fueled 14 devastating wildfires across Los Angeles, destroying over 18,000 buildings and displacing 200,000 residents. While officials reported 31 direct fatalities, public health studies estimate 440 excess deaths linked to toxic smoke and disrupted medical care. In the disaster’s aftermath, a stark wealth divide has defined recovery efforts, with lower-income residents facing displacement while wealthier communities leverage private resources to rebuild.
Technical information: Canon EOS R5 | Canon EF 16-35mm F4L IS USM | 26mm | F4 | 1/20 | ISO 8000
North and Central America – Long-Term Projects
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Photographer: César Rodríguez, Norwegian Red Cross, SNCA, The New York Times
Title: Mexico, A Changing Climate
Caption: A child runs up to the second floor of a partially submerged home. The 2024 floods affected 7,000 residents. Many families lost personal belongings like photographs and other cherished items. Chalco, State of Mexico, Mexico, 19 August 2024.
Story: Mexico is especially vulnerable to climate extremes, with 52% of its territory situated in arid or semi-arid zones. Over the last two decades, environmental disasters have internally displaced approximately 2.7 million people, a figure projected to reach up to 8 million by 2050. This project documents the enormous cost of these changes on a human scale: from the rapid erosion of Tabasco’s coastlines, where sea levels are rising three times faster than the global average, to the systemic water scarcities in Monterrey and the State of Mexico, where renewable water availability has plummeted by 81% since 1950.
Technical information: Sony Cyber-shot RX100 VII | 28mm | F5 |1/3200 sec |ISO 640
South America – Singles
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Photographer: Santiago Arcos, for Reuters
Title: Funeral for “The Four of Malvinas”
Caption: Teammates mourn Ismael Arroyo (15) who was tortured and murdered by Air Force personnel. Families, neighbors, and residents of Las Malvinas accompanied the coffins from their homes to the cemetery, turning the funeral into a massive public act of grief and protest. Guayaquil, Ecuador, 1 January 2025.
Story: Ecuador’s militarized crackdown on transnational gangs has transformed vulnerable communities into targets for state violence. In December 2024, four Afro-Ecuadorian boys – aged 11 to 15 – disappeared after a neighborhood football practice in Guayaquil. The government initially denied involvement, then attempted to label the children as criminals. The discovery of their burned remains near an air force base shattered the Las Malvinas community and exposed the dangers of security policies that racially profile and criminalize marginalized youth.
Technical information: Sony a9 | Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 DG DN Art | F2.8 | 1/125 sec | ISO 4000
South America – Stories
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Photographer: Eduardo Anizelli, Folha de S.Paulo
Title: Those Who Carry the Dead
Caption: In October 2025, a massive police operation targeting the Comando Vermelho criminal syndicate unfolded in Rio de Janeiro’s Complexo do Alemão and Penha favelas. Deploying a record 2,500 local and military officers, the raid was the deadliest police operation in Brazilian history. Of the 122 who were killed, the vast majority were Afro-Brazilians. In the aftermath, authorities failed to deploy forensic teams, forcing the community to bear the physical and emotional weight of carrying their own dead.
Story: Municipal workers wash away blood in São Lucas Square. Despite the unprecedented death toll and failure to apprehend key gang leaders, the state government declared the operation a success. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 29 October 2025.
Technical information: Canon EOS R3 | RF 35mm F1.4 L VCM | F1.4 | 1/16,000 || ISO 400
South America – Long-Term Projects
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Photographer: Pablo E. Piovano, Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation, Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation, Lawen.doc
Title: The Human Cost of Agrotoxins
Caption: Fabián Tomasi, a former agrochemical worker, suffered from severe toxic polyneuropathy and became a global face of the fight against agrotoxins. He passed away in 2018. Entre Ríos, Argentina, 25 October 2016.
Story: In 1996, Argentina approved genetically modified, herbicide-resistant soybeans paired with glyphosate-based herbicides, a policy adopted without independent research. In three decades, pesticide use skyrocketed from 40 million to 580 million liters annually. Today, 60% of Argentina’s cultivated land is sprayed, affecting 14 million people. Despite independent studies linking exposure to increased risks of cancer and congenital malformations, regulations continue to loosen even as agrochemical usage moves closer to human settlements. This project documents the human cost of an economic model that prioritizes agro-industrial profit over the lives of its rural citizens.
Technical information: None provided
West, Central and South Asia – Singles
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Photographer: Yasir Iqbal, Outlook India Magazine
Title: A Daughter’s Grief in Kashmir
Caption: Sanam Bashir (21) collapses with grief at her mother’s funeral. Nargis Begum (45) died from shrapnel wounds after a mortar shell struck while the two were fleeing their home. Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, India, 9 May 2025.
Story: The Kashmir region has been contested between India and Pakistan since the 1947 partition of British India, a territorial dispute that has fueled decades of conflict. On 22 April 2025, an attack on tourists in Pahalgam killed 26 people. India blamed Pakistan-backed militant groups and responded with strikes on 7 May. Four days of intense cross-border shelling, drone attacks, and airstrikes followed. Thousands of civilians were displaced, dozens killed, and homes and infrastructure along the Line of Control (the de facto border) were destroyed. Widespread international pressure secured a ceasefire on 10 May, averting further escalation between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Technical information: Nikon D810 | 24mm | F2.8 | 1/160 sec | ISO 400
West, Central and South Asia – Stories
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Photographer: Saher Alghorra, for The New York Times
Title: Witnessing Gaza
Caption: Tamer Hassan al-Shafei and his family break their Ramadan fast in the remains of their home. Food shortages meant only basics were served instead of the usual spread. Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip, 4 March 2025.
Story: In 2025, civilians in Gaza endured starvation, famine, and relentless bombardment as the death toll surpassed 75,000 and Israeli authorities severely restricted the flow of humanitarian aid. A ceasefire agreement in October has yet to bring meaningful relief. Palestinian journalists – living through the reality they document – are the world’s few witnesses to what a UN Commission has concluded is a genocide. Israel disputes this. The photographer worked under immense danger, driven by a refusal to let the world turn away. “Even when everything around me told me to stop, I couldn’t – silence would mean surrender.”
Technical information: Canon EOS R6 II | EF 70-200mm F2.8L IS III USM | F/4 | 1/80 sec |ISO 2500
West, Central and South Asia – Long-Term Projects
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Photographer: Diego Ibarra Sánchez
Title: Hijacked Education
Caption: Students walk to Miadad Primary School in Khartanai Village. Hundreds of children across Afghanistan travel long distances on foot to attend classes. Haska Meyna District, Afghanistan, 13 November 2025.
Story: Across the world, war, extremism, and displacement deny children the right to education. Schools are destroyed, teachers killed or forced to relocate, textbooks burned, and classrooms turned into barracks. The UN estimates that 85 million of the 234 million school-age children affected by conflict worldwide have no access to education at all. The consequences extend far beyond the classroom, impacting physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. Since 2011, the photographer – son of a teacher and father of an 11-year-old – has documented this crisis across nine countries, from Western and South Asia, to Europe and South America.
Technical information: Canon EOS R5 II | 1/800 sec | ISO 100