Sony World Photography Awards 2026: the structure winners

The Sony World Photography Awards introduced its winners at a gala ceremony in London this night (16 April 2026), honouring photographers throughout a spread of classes from over 430,000 submissions from greater than 200 international locations and territories. The night’s most prestigious title – Photographer of the Year 2026 – went to Citlali Fabián, a visible artist from the Yalalteca Indigenous group in Mexico, at present based mostly in London, for her sequence Bilha, Stories of my Sisters.

Architecture & Design on the Sony World Photography Awards

The Architecture & Design prize went to Joy Saha for Homes of Haor, an aerial research of vernacular buildings within the Haor wetlands of Kishoreganj, Bangladesh. The sequence paperwork a group tailored to seasonal flooding – properties perched on raised mounds that turn into islands throughout monsoon season, with boats as the first technique of transport. Photographed from above, the elevated settlements, roads and livestock areas comprise an modern response to an unforgiving atmosphere.

(Image credit score: © Joy Saha)

Second place went to André Tezza for Everyday Structures, a documentation of small neighbourhood grocery shops on the outskirts of Curitiba, Brazil. These modest, family-run buildings – often merging domestic and commercial space – represent what Tezza calls ‘an architecture of resistance’ against the homogenising force of large retail chains. The work makes the case that architectural beauty is not confined to city centres or celebrated landmarks, but persists in the peripheral, the overlooked and the ordinary.

(Image credit: © Andre Tezza)

Third place was awarded to Chen Liang for a series exploring the watchtowers of Jiangmen in Guangdong Province. Built during the Republican era (1912-1949), largely by members of the Chinese diaspora, the towers fuse Chinese and Western architectural influences. The Kaiping Diaolou and surrounding villages were designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2007.

(Image credit: © Chen Liang)

The shortlisted works were equally varied in geography and ambition. In Ad Astra, Cristopher Rogel Blanquet and Daniel Ochoa de Olza photograph the US-Mexico border wall by night, capturing how darkness transforms the structure. In Historical Architecture of Iran, Farshid Rahimi Kalahroudi documents the country’s historic mosques, public spaces and vernacular structures. Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni turn their cameras on the abandoned Hotel Florio in Puglia, scene of a 1979 Camorra summit, recording its empty rooms and overgrown grounds.

In Night Shift, Mathieu Moindron photographs Sendai’s service districts – shops, car parks and petrol stations – after hours, using only available light. Peter Lipton’s Kabe: The Walls of Tohoku documents the tsunami barriers built along Japan’s north-east coast after 2011, while Stephan Zirwes’ Second-Hand Houses features holiday homes built from reclaimed materials. Finally, Tomasz Kawecki photographs the Mausoleum of Martyrdom of Polish Villages in Michniów, a 2009 memorial whose segmented form allows light and weather into the interior.

(Image credit: © Farshid Rahimi Kalahroudi)

(Image credit: © Mathieu Moindron)

Taken together, this year’s Architecture & Design submissions suggest a global photography community increasingly drawn to architecture not as spectacle, but as evidence of the people who inhabit it, and how they live, adapt and remember.

Sony World Photography Awards 2026 exhibition runs 17 April – 4 May 2026 at Somerset House, London