A total of 42 incredible photographers have been chosen to vye for the overall 2026 World Press Photo Award. The longlist of regional winners portrays everything from the fires in Galicia to the protests in Madagascar. The photo of the year will be announced on 23 April in Amsterdam.
War in Gaza, Ukraine or Pakistan. Protests in the United States. Women fighting for their rights in Guatemala and Kenya. Forest fires devouring thousands of hectares. That is, in short, what World Press Photo 2026 has decided the world should look at.
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The world's most prestigious photojournalism competition has announced its 42 regional winners, divided into three categories - individual photographs, photo stories and long-term projects - and six geographical regions. The Photo of the Year, chosen from among the 42 winners, will be unveiled at a ceremony in Amsterdam on 23 April.
To arrive at these 42 entries, an independent jury evaluated 57,376 images submitted by 3,747 photographers from 141 countries. The president of the jury, Kira Pollack, did not mince her words when assessing the selection:
"This is a critical moment, for democracy, for truth, for the question of what we are willing to see and point to as a society and what we are willing to ignore. The photographers recognised here have done their part. They have left their testimony. Now it is our turn to look.
Spain features strongly among the best of the year
The Spanish participation in this edition has notable weight. Three photographers have been recognised for works produced in very different settings, which gives an idea of the diversity of themes covered by the competition.
- Brais Lorenzo, born in Ourense in 1986, has won in the category of graphic reportage for Europe with 'Burned Lands', a series on forest fires in Galicia published by Spanish news agency EFE, 'Revista 5W' and 'El País'. The winning images include the Larouco fire, the worst ever recorded in the history of Galicia, which burned through the night as the flames reached O Courel, a highly biodiverse mountain range.
- Luis Tato has been awarded in the category of photojournalism for Africa for 'Madagascar's Gen Z Protests', a work for France's Agence France-Presse that documents the mobilisations promoted on social networks, with symbols taken from the Japanese manga 'One Piece', which ended up provoking the exile of the Malagasy president Andry Rajoelina. In one of the images, a student holds the flag adopted by Generation Z protesters around the world, a symbol that comes from the manga universe in which pirates confront corrupt rulers.
- The third is Diego Ibarra Sánchez, awarded in the category of long-term projects for West, Central, and South Asia for 'Hijacked Education', a work that documents attacks on education in countries such as Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Iraq, Lebanon, Ukraine and Colombia.
His images include girls in informal open-air schools under Taliban ban, books burned by the Islamic State and a Ukrainian soldier looking out the window of a kindergarten converted into a military position. The UN estimates that 85 million school-age children affected by conflict have no access to education at all.
Gaza, Ukraine and migration mark the global pulse
Beyond the Spanish recognition, all the award winners draw a map of contemporary pain with some focal points particularly present. Saher Alghorra's report for 'The New York Times' includes images of the collapse of buildings under bombardment in Gaza, families breaking their Ramadan fast amidst the rubble and Palestinian prisoners released after a ceasefire.
Alghorra describes her work with a phrase that the jury highlights: "Even though everything around me was telling me to stop, I couldn't: silence would mean surrender.
Ukrainealso takes centre stage in the competition, four years after the beginning of the Russian aggression. Evgeniy Maloletka of Associated Press won in the individual European photo category with an image taken on 24 April 2025 in Kiev.
In North America, the Trump administration's immigration policies have also generated images that the jury deemed worthy of a prize, from the protests in front of ICE in Portland to the effects on separated families.
The competition is not, however, limited to armed conflict. Among the prize winners are also works on ballet dancers in South Africa, women horsemen in Morocco or the consequences of the mega-fires in Los Angeles in January 2025, which destroyed more than 18,000 buildings and displaced 200,000 people.
An exhibition that will travel the world
The 42 winning entries will be part of the annual World Press Photo travelling exhibition, which is expected to be seen by more than four million visitors in more than 80 cities around the world. The winner of the photo of the year will also receive a cash prize of 10,000 euros.
The organisers emphasise that 31 of the 42 prize-winners are from the region they have photographed, a fact that reflects the competition's commitment to local and informed photojournalism. The representation of women and non-binary people reached 22% of the total, a figure that the sector still considers insufficient but which marks an upward trend compared to previous editions.
The ceremony on 23 April in Amsterdam will determine which of the winning images best sums up 2025. Given the weight of the themes and the quality of the works selected, the decision is not likely to be an easy one.
