The 2026 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition Puts the World in Focus

Each year, the Sony World Photography Awards unfolds like a global expedition, charting a visual course across continents, cultures, and ecosystems. With the announcement of the 10 category winners and shortlisted photographers in the 2026 Open competition, now in its 19th year, the Awards once again affirm the singular power of photography to document, interpret, and elevate the world around us. A single frame, precisely observed, can hold complexity, ignite curiosity, and reveal narratives that extend far beyond its borders.

The Open competition recognizes the most compelling standalone images made in the past year. Drawn from photographers’ strongest works of 2025, the selected photographs form a sweeping visual atlas of contemporary experience. Stark industrial landscapes, wind sculpted desert formations, intimate human portraits, and fleeting moments of humor in the natural world coexist in a collection that speaks to both diversity and shared humanity.

This year, more than 430,000 images were submitted from over 200 countries and territories. The scale of participation reflects not only the global reach of the Awards but also a universal impulse to witness and record a planet undergoing constant transformation.

The Open Photographer of the Year will be announced at the Awards ceremony in London on April 16. The recipient will receive a 5,000 US dollar cash prize and a range of Sony Digital Imaging equipment. A curated selection of winning and shortlisted works will be exhibited at Somerset House from April 17 through May 4, 2026, before traveling to additional international venues, extending this visual dialogue across borders.

In Architecture, Markus Naarttijärvi of Sweden directs attention to the paper mill in Obbola, Sweden. On a dark November night, the industrial complex emerges through layers of shadow, concrete, and low cloud. The photograph becomes a study in atmosphere and structure, where human engineering meets the elemental forces of northern latitude. The mill stands as both infrastructure and monument, embedded within a landscape shaped by seasonal extremes and long winter light.

The Creative category winner, Siavosh Ejlali of Iran, presents Lost Hope, a carefully staged portrait that employs symbolic elements to create a poignant tribute to Iranian women. Through deliberate composition and metaphor, the image navigates themes of resilience, identity, and constraint. It is both a personal statement and a culturally resonant document.

In Landscape, J Fritz Rumpf of the United States turns his lens toward the dunes of Sossusvlei in Namibia in Shapes and Patterns of the Desert. These dunes, formed through aeolian processes over millennia, rise in sweeping geometric lines rendered in deep ochers and sculpted shadow. The photograph reads as a meditation on geomorphology and time, revealing how wind acts as both architect and artist across an ancient terrain.

The Lifestyle category introduces a quieter yet equally profound narrative of human and animal connection. In Charlotte and Dolly, Vanta Coda III of the United States captures a young woman and her cow resting together in a barn in West Virginia during the height of summer. Within the diffused light of timber beams and shaded air, the image reflects agrarian rhythms and interspecies companionship, revealing the intimacy woven into rural life.

Motion takes on visceral intensity in the work of Franklin Littlefield of the United States. His motion blur photograph of a punk concert in Providence, Rhode Island translates sound and velocity into visual form. Blurred bodies and streaks of light convey the kinetic force of live performance, demonstrating photography’s capacity to capture not only appearance but energy itself.

In the Natural World and Wildlife category, Klaus Hellmich of Germany documents a blue Arctic fox on the Varanger Peninsula in Norway. Caught in a blizzard, the fox stands alone against wind driven snow. The image evokes the ecological realities of Arctic environments, where survival depends on adaptation to extreme climatic conditions. It is both an intimate wildlife portrait and a stark reminder of fragile polar ecosystems facing accelerating environmental change.

The Object category winner, Robby Ogilvie of the United Kingdom, focuses on the vibrant Bo Kaap neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa. In Colour Divides, a blue car is positioned against bold green and pink facades. The composition highlights the interplay of color, urban design, and cultural identity, transforming an everyday streetscape into a study of contrast and visual harmony.

Portraiture intersects with scientific inquiry in Elle Leontiev’s The Barefoot Volcanologist. The Australian photographer portrays Phillip, an internationally recognized, self taught volcano scientist, standing atop a volcanic rock bomb on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. The geological formation beneath him, forged in explosive eruption, anchors the portrait in tectonic reality. The image honors the human drive to understand volatile natural systems and situates scientific exploration within the raw forces of the Earth.

Street Photography winner Giulia Pissagroia of Italy offers Between the Lines, a candid black and white image taken at Ørnevegen, known as Eagle Road, in Norway. A family’s animated expressions as they take in the sweeping vista provide a moment of levity amid dramatic topography. The photograph captures contemporary tourism as a ritual encounter with landscape, revealing how awe and humor coexist in shared public spaces.

In Travel, Megumi Murakami of Japan documents the Abare Festival in the Noto region. Her luminous image shows men leaping into a river as torches blaze against the night sky, flames reflecting in the water in a choreography of light and motion. Sustained for more than three centuries, the festival represents living cultural heritage transmitted across generations. Within the frame, tradition, endurance, and communal identity burn with palpable intensity.

Together, these photographs trace a planetary narrative that moves from industrial margins and desert basins to Arctic storms, volcanic islands, and enduring cultural ceremonies. The 2026 Open competition affirms that photography remains a vital instrument of exploration and awareness. Each single image, grounded in observation and shaped by intention, expands the collective field of vision and calls for deeper engagement with the landscapes, cultures, and ecological systems that sustain life on Earth.

OPEN COMPETITION CATEGORY WINNERS AND SHORTLIST