One of These 12 Photographers Will Win the 2026 Leica Oskar Barnack Award

An worldwide jury has chosen the 12 shortlisted finalists for the forty sixth Leica Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA), one of the crucial prestigious images prizes on this planet.

The 12 finalists under have been chosen by means of an intensive, multi-stage judging course of and might be introduced in expanded element over the approaching weeks.

Further, for the primary time, the jury additionally chosen the winner of the newly established LOBA Women Grant. The winner of the LOBA Women Grant could have their work introduced subsequent 12 months.

The winners of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award Main Prize, the Newcomer Award, and the LOBA Women Grant will all be introduced on October 8, 2026, at an awards ceremony in Wetzlar, Germany.

The Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award is chosen from photographers nominated by specialists at 28 worldwide establishments in 18 international locations.

Today, solely the finalists for the Main Prize are being unveiled.

The LOBA awards have acknowledged distinctive photographic expertise yearly since 1980. This 12 months’s jury chosen shortlisted photographers from a a lot bigger pool of photographers nominated by 130 images specialists throughout 48 international locations. Each nominator can choose as much as three photograph collection to appoint.


Without additional ado, the 2026 Leica Oskar Barnack Award finalists.

2026 LOBA Main Prize Shortlist

Saher Alghorra

Palestinian photojournalist Saher Alghorra documented the battle in Gaza for his collection, Witnessing Gaza. This 2025 collection reveals scenes of shortage and hunger, violence, and loss. Beyond the moments that made international headlines, Alghorra’s work additionally seems to be extra intently on the interpersonal tales on a smaller scale that by no means make the information.

Todd Antony

New Zealander Todd Antony’s collection, Buzkashi, delivers putting black-and-white pictures of the archaic traditions of the eponymous sport performed on horseback. This sport is practiced in the present day in Tajikistan and entails combatants preventing over a headless goat cadaver. The sport has been performed for hundreds of years after it was invented by nomadic horse-riding cultures in Central Asia.

Anush Babajanyan

Photographer Anush Babajanyan’s collection, The Aral Sea and the Battered Waters of Central Asia, does as its title suggests and appears on the Aral Sea, which was as soon as the world’s fourth-largest lake. The lake shrank over 90 % due to Soviet hydro initiatives, creating an environmental disaster that impacts Uzbek and Kazakh communities to at the present time. The folks there have been pressured to adapt, and because of the Dike Kokaral dam, have been in a position to start recovering.

Damir Faizulin

Damir Faizulin, a Russian photographer, seems to be at nature and the way folks reside alongside it within the mountainous Dagestan area. Faizulin’s collection, Preserving Nature as Preserving Ourselves, grapples with how folks reside alongside nature, stability usually conflicting objectives, and carve out a brand new future continuously affected by the previous.

William Keo

Extramuros is the work of French photographer William Keo. The collection seems to be on the younger folks residing in banlieues in the present day. While the phrase interprets to “suburbs,” these are basically the housing initiatives of Paris, and the neighborhoods have lengthy been scarred by social violence, financial disaster, and controversial authorities housing insurance policies. But the banlieues are additionally the birthplace of unbelievable creativity and innovation. Keo offers with all of that and extra in Extramuros.

Slava Lyu-fa

In Russia’s excessive Arctic areas, life is exceptionally troublesome and much more fragile. Photographer Slava Lyu-fa factors his lens at how Russia’s Arctic communities work collectively to outlive for the collection, Inner Distance.

Valery Melnikov

Another Russian photographer, Valery Melnikov, focuses on the Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol in Mariupol: Open Wounds. Melnikov’s documentary collection paperwork how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine devastated the town and its folks. Melnikov has spent his profession documenting battle and battle, together with in Chechnya, Georgia, Lebanon, and Syria. He started working in jap Ukraine over a decade in the past when Russia first started navy operations in Crimea.

Benedikt Renč

Czech photographer Benedikt Renč’s collection, Cairo, gives a private perspective of Cairo, Egypt’s capital metropolis. Cairo is present process radical modifications, and Renč says he needed to “document the last generation to live in this raw and uncouth reality.” The photographer says Cairo will quickly change past recognition, and he hopes his photographs assist protect how the town as soon as was.

Elliot Ross

Taiwanese-American photographer Elliot Ross’ collection, A Question of Balance, paperwork the historical past of water provide within the Navajo Nation, the biggest Native American reservation within the United States. Ross considers how the water provide has been formed by battle between Indigenous folks and settlers, droughts, and extreme water consumption by these residing far off the reservation.

Annie Sakkab

Annie Sakkab is a Palestinian-Jordanian photographer who additionally centered on water for her collection. We Used to Watch the Rivers Go By seems to be at how water is rather more than only a useful resource for folks.

“What began as curiosity about a resource turned into a deep dive into my own history and my heritage, a search for roots in a country shaped by centuries of change and hardship. This is not only a study of water; it is also a story about people,” Sakkab says.

David Sládek

Czechoslovakian-born photographer David Sládek, who now lives within the United Kingdom and Ireland, made the Slovakian village of Šumiac his second house almost 20 years in the past. Since then, Sládek has been photographing every day life there. His black-and-white collection, People of Šumiac, presents this long-term venture and the way a creek within the village separates two distinct teams of individuals, native Slovaks and the Roma who reside there. As Sládek feedback, the water shouldn’t be the one factor that separates these two teams of individuals in Šumiac.

Laila AnnMarie Stevens

American photographer Laila AnnMarie Stevens’ work, Clayton Sisterhood Project, was impressed by her need to really feel linked to her ancestors, a legacy of sturdy Black girls. The collection focuses on Stevens’ two sisters, who, alongside along with her 4 nieces, moved from Queens in New York City to a shared home and plot of land in Clayton, North Caroline, to create new lives for themselves.

Winners Will Be Announced on October 8, 2026

The winners of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, LOBA Newcomer Award, and new LOBA Women Grant might be unveiled on October 8, 2026, at an awards ceremony in Wetzlar, Germany.

“The Leica Oskar Barnack Award celebrates not only exceptional photographic quality but also photography’s ability to make societal change visible and to create connections between people,” says Leica’s Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Art Director and Chief Representative of Leica Galleries International.

“The LOBA draws attention to longstanding projects, which would not receive the visibility they deserve without this platform.”

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Image creditLeica Oskar Barnack Award. Individual photographers are credited within the captions.