2026 European Photography Awards Winners Offer Many Ways of Seeing the World

The greatest images do greater than document a second. The 2026 European Photography Awards rejoice photos that pull us into one, inviting us to linger on a fleeting gesture, look once more at a well-recognized place, or see the world from an sudden perspective.

This year’s competition drew greater than 3,000 submissions from photographers representing greater than 40 international locations. At the middle of the awards are Canadian photographer Michelle Valberg and Germany’s Thea Mihu, named Professional and Amateur Photographer of the Year, respectively, alongside 9 Category Winners whose work spans structure, editorial, advantageous artwork, nature, and other people images.

Michelle Valberg Finds a Moment Between Species

Michelle Valberg’s “Edge of the Feast” captures a cut up second of chaos in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. A humpback whale surges towards the floor with its mouth huge open, whereas a gull drops towards the opening, skimming the sting of the whale’s attain. Water folds across the whale’s jaw because the feeding occasion unfolds, bringing two species collectively in a fleeting second of danger and alternative.

The {photograph} was submitted within the Nature Photography – Wildlife class, the place Valberg additionally obtained the Professional Nature Photography of the Year title. It finally earned her the competitors’s highest skilled honor, together with a $3,000 money prize and the European Photography Awards statuette.

Valberg, who PetaPixel interviewed again in 2023, has spent greater than 4 many years photographing wildlife and wild locations throughout all seven continents. A Nikon Ambassador and recipient of the Order of Canada, she is thought for combining wildlife images with environmental storytelling, with initiatives starting from spirit bears within the Great Bear Rainforest to polar bears within the Arctic.

She can be the Photographer-in-Residence for Canadian Geographic, a Fellow and Board of Governors member of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and a member of The Explorers Club. Her work has appeared on journal covers, cash, postage stamps, public artwork installations, and in galleries worldwide. In 2026, she additionally obtained a gold medal within the wildlife class on the World Photographic Cup in Iceland.

That background offers “Edge of the Feast” a spot inside Valberg’s broader strategy to wildlife images. Rather than merely presenting the dimensions of a humpback whale, the picture hinges on the connection between the animals and the exact timing required to seize their interplay. The gull strikes between hazard and reward whereas the whale commits to the feeding second, creating a picture that speaks to each the depth of the encounter and the delicate connections inside the pure world.

For Valberg, images has lengthy been tied to conservation and connection. She based Project North, a nonprofit initiative that delivered greater than $2 million in sporting gear to youth throughout greater than 40 Arctic communities throughout its 17-year run. She continues to show and lead images workshops and expeditions targeted on wildlife and wild locations.

Thea Mihu Finds a Story in a Sea of Salt

In Vietnam’s Hon Khoi Salt Fields, generations of staff have harvested salt by hand utilizing nothing greater than seawater, daylight, and wind. German photographer Thea Mihu’s “The White Harvest” brings this centuries-old follow into view, documenting the standard salt harvest in Dong Ninh Hoa Ward.

Across a whole bunch of hectares of shallow evaporation ponds, a small variety of staff proceed the bodily demanding strategy of gathering salt. Mihu’s {photograph} emphasizes the big scale of the panorama in opposition to the few individuals working inside it, turning the salt fields into each a portrait of labor and a research of the connection between individuals and their setting.

As modernization reshapes conventional industries, the picture turns into greater than a document of how salt is produced. It captures a lifestyle that has endured throughout generations and raises a quieter query about what’s preserved and what’s misplaced as older types of work give solution to fashionable strategies.

Mihu’s {photograph} was named Amateur Photographer of the Year, the very best honor within the competitors’s newbie division. She receives a $2,000 money prize and the European Photography Awards statuette.

The Professional Winners Find Stories in Unexpected Places

The skilled class winners span 5 very totally different photographic worlds. Taken collectively, they reveal how broadly images can interpret a topic, shifting from the geometry of a metropolis to the disappearance of communities and the uncooked physicality of wildlife.

Hong Kong’s Density Becomes an Abstract Landscape

From the bottom, Hong Kong can really feel virtually impossibly dense. Derry Ainsworth turns that density into one thing summary in “Hong Kong From Above,” his Architecture Photography – Drone profitable collection.

Seen from straight above, residential buildings and company towers turn into patterns of geometry, repetition, and shade. Kowloon’s tightly packed constructions sit alongside the monumental scale of Central, whereas the angle strips away a lot of town’s visible familiarity.

Ainsworth’s background in architectural design informs the work, which explores the strain between the immense scale of human building and the natural methods life finds its place inside it. What would possibly seem chaotic from road degree turns into virtually graphic when seen from above.

Lucas Dragone Documents Life Amid a City in Transition

In Wuhan, demolition is altering total neighborhoods. Lucas Dragone’s “Silent Resilience” appears at what stays within the areas between what has already disappeared and what’s nonetheless being lived in.

The Belgian photographer’s editorial collection follows neighborhoods marked for demolition, the place crumbling partitions and rubble exist alongside the unusual rhythms of each day life. Buildings are coming down, towers are rising, but individuals proceed to inhabit these transitional areas.

There isn’t any apparent spectacle in Dragone’s images. Instead, the collection finds its power in quiet commentary, documenting the persistence of on a regular basis life as the encircling bodily setting adjustments.

Eva Wang Turns Attraction Into Something Dark and Unsettling

Eva Wang’s “BLACK HOLE” takes a really totally different route. Named the Fine Art Photography – Portrait winner, the work makes use of the language of gravitational attraction as a metaphor for need, obsession, and give up.

“You’re like a black hole, irresistible to me. I’m absorbed, dominated. Lost my free will.”

The accompanying textual content describes a development from attraction to finish lack of management, invoking “spaghettification” and the distortion of house and time. The result’s a portrait idea that treats attraction as one thing concurrently darkish, harmful, and not possible to withstand.

King Penguins Stand Their Ground Against the Elements

Valberg seems once more among the many skilled winners with “Standing Tall,” her Nature Photography – Wildlife category-winning picture.

Along the shore of South Georgia, a row of king penguins stands shoulder to shoulder going through into the wind. Waves surge round them, kelp twists within the foreground, and mountains rise behind the birds within the distance.

The composition depends on repetition and distinction. The penguins stay virtually completely nonetheless whereas the water strikes round them, and the distant mountains set up the remoteness of the setting. Together, these components create a picture about endurance, presence, and life holding its floor in opposition to the weather.

Roberto Pazzi Documents Cultures at Risk of Disappearing

Roberto Pazzi’s “Vanishing Worlds,” the People Photography – Culture winner, turns the digicam towards communities whose traditions and methods of life have gotten more and more troublesome to protect.

The Italian photographer’s mission travels by means of distant locations and intimate moments, documenting rituals, languages, ancestral data, and collective reminiscences affected by globalization and technological change.

Pazzi doesn’t body these cultures merely as relics of the previous. Instead, the mission acts as a visible document of what exists now and what might ultimately disappear. Each {photograph} turns into a fraction of a bigger cultural reminiscence, elevating a query that extends past any single group: what will we lose when variations between cultures start to vanish?

Amateur Winners Turn Their Cameras Toward Culture and Place

The newbie class winners equally transfer throughout very totally different topics, from the structure of Montpelier to Indigenous traditions, volcanic exercise, and cultures preventing to protect their identification.

A Montpellier Landmark Takes on an Organic Form

Felipe Martín-Serrano Ortiz’s profitable structure {photograph} brings a hanging constructing right down to human scale.

“L’Arbre Urbain: Montpellier’s white canopy” depicts L’Arbre Blanc, designed by Sou Fujimoto, from beneath. Its monumental cantilevered balconies lengthen outward like branches, creating the impression of a man-made tree in opposition to a deep blue sky.

Cyclists passing beneath the construction present a way of scale, grounding the bizarre structure in Montpellier’s on a regular basis life. The {photograph} finds one thing virtually natural in a constructing outlined by concrete, geometry, and engineering.

Philipp Schmieja Documents a Culture Determined to Endure

Philipp Schmieja’s “Survive to legacy” takes images into South Kordofan, Sudan, the place the Nuba individuals proceed to protect traditions regardless of many years of battle, displacement, and out of doors stress.

Among these traditions is wrestling and stick preventing, an historic follow that has developed from martial coaching right into a celebrated cultural occasion. These gatherings, often known as Big Sura, assist symbolize particular person villages and strengthen a way of group, notably throughout harvest seasons and festivities.

Schmieja’s documentary work locations these traditions inside a a lot bigger historical past. The Nuba have confronted stress to desert customs and methods of life, but the pictures present a tradition that continues to keep up its identification.

The mission additionally carries a selected photographic historical past. Schmieja notes that these are among the many first images of the Nuba made after the controversial work of Leni Riefenstahl within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, bringing a up to date perspective to a individuals who have hardly ever been photographed from outdoors the context of that earlier work.

Fuego Volcano Turns the Night Into a River of Light

For Andreia Costa, the panorama itself grew to become the topic.

“Veins of Fire,” the newbie Nature Photography – Natural Art winner, was photographed throughout an eruption of Guatemala’s Fuego volcano. For a couple of seconds, the volcano launched lava and volcanic materials into the evening, reworking the darkness right into a panorama of warmth, mild, and motion.

The {photograph} captures that transient transformation, when geological forces turn into seen in opposition to the evening sky. It reminds us how shortly a panorama can change when one thing historic and immense beneath the floor breaks by means of.

Photographs Preserve Traditions at Risk of Disappearing

Schmieja’s second newbie Category Winner, “Fading – the last of their kinds,” turns once more to cultures confronting the lack of traditions.

The mission considers how battle, colonization, westernization, modernization, and compelled displacement have affected Indigenous communities. Languages disappear, conventional gown and delicacies change, rituals and dances are remodeled, and practices that when outlined communities can turn into unfamiliar to youthful generations.

The images are supposed not as criticism, however as preservation. Schmieja describes them as fragments of various lives that bridge generations, documenting cultural data earlier than it’s misplaced.

The mission finally asks what occurs when the world adjustments sooner than reminiscence can protect it. Its images turn into each information of the current and reminders of how a lot cultural data can disappear with out leaving a visual hint.

The 2026 Winners Offer Many Ways of Seeing the World

The 2026 European Photography Awards have been chosen by means of a blind analysis course of from greater than 3,000 submissions representing photographers from greater than 40 international locations. Beyond the 2 Photographer of the Year awards and 9 Category Winners, the competitors additionally acknowledged Platinum, Gold, and Silver recipients throughout 13 images classes.

“The 2026 European Photography Awards winners represent an exceptional international body of photographic achievement,” stated Thomas Brandt, spokesperson for the International Awards Associate.

“These honors celebrate photographers whose vision, discipline and command of the medium have distinguished themselves internationally. We are proud to recognize their achievements and present their work to a global audience,” Brandt says.

What emerges from this yr’s winners shouldn’t be one explicit definition of photographic excellence. Instead, the gathering strikes freely between the intimate and the immense: a gull suspended above a whale, penguins going through the wind, a metropolis seen from straight overhead, traditions held onto throughout generations, and a volcano briefly illuminating the darkness.

Each {photograph} begins with a selected second or place. Together, they turn into one thing bigger: a document of the methods photographers proceed to take a look at a quickly altering world, and the tales that may be preserved once they do.

---

Image creditEuropean Photography Awards, Individual photographers as credited