One of These 10 Students Will Win the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards

The Sony World Photography Awards has unveiled the shortlisted photographs in its 2026 Student competitors. The shortlisted tasks showcase the distinctive photographic expertise of the subsequent era of photographers.

In complete, the 2026 version of the Sony World Photography Awards, the competitors’s nineteenth version, acquired greater than 430,000 entries from photographers in over 200 nations and territories. It’s arguably the most important and most prestigious images competitors on the earth, and per typical, the Student phase featured heated competitors.

The 10 Shortlisted Student Photographers within the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards

For the 2026 Student competitors, images college students from main universities worldwide had been tasked with submitting a collection of 5-10 photographs in response to the transient Together. The 10 shortlisted collection all responded to the transient in putting methods. All the photographers approached human connection in distinctive methods.

For instance, Julian Cabral from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Argentina created an autobiographical photograph collection, Triplets, exploring the shut bond between himself and his two brothers. Meanwhile, Jubair Ahmed Arnob of the Counter Foto — A Center for Visual Arts in Bangladesh explored nostalgia and a quickly altering panorama of their hometown by means of the collection The Place Where I Used to Play.

Chinese images scholar Ci Song, who research at Drexel University within the United States, photographed communities in West Philadelphia grappling with ongoing gentrification. Indian photographer Aakash Gulzar from the University of Kashmir delivered intimate portraits of pigeon keepers, specializing in their shut connections to their birds.

Teresa Halbreiter, a scholar at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, was one among quite a few shortlisted photographers who captured photographs specializing in the shared experiences of teams of individuals. Halbreiter’s collection, Stillgestanden (‘Attention’) approaches femininity within the male-dominated German Armed Forces. Chinese scholar Yulai Xu, who research on the University of the Arts London, tackled household relationships within the collection, Fish Tail. Australian images scholar Matte Dixon of Griffith University approached how individuals’s uneasiness can foster a shared understanding within the collection Suspiria de Profundis.

Belgian photographer Laura Anna Rossa, who goes to LUCA School of Arts Sint Lukas in Brussels, befriended a long-term affected person at a psychiatric ward within the Belgian countryside and documented their time collectively. Chanel Grobler, a South African images scholar at Open Window Institute, targeted on quiet locations with faint traces of human presence for her shortlisted collection. Finally, Chinese photographer Zifan Zhang, who research on the Danish School of Media and Journalism, targeted on a younger era of Latvians as they arrive of age and work out how they may form Latvia’s future.

The winner of Student Photographer of the Year shall be chosen from the ten shortlisted photographers above and shall be introduced on the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 ceremony in London on April 16. The college of the general successful photographer will obtain Sony Digital Imaging tools price 30,000 euros, or almost $36,000.

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Image credit: Sony World Photography Awards. Individual photographers are credited within the picture captions.