See a preview of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 contest

You by no means know what you may discover down the lens.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest launched a preview of the photographs it has chosen for the 62nd version of the competitors placed on by the Natural History Museum in London on Aug. 26.

In a information launch for the preview, the competition stated that it obtained greater than 65,000 entries, which it described as “record-breaking.” A jury narrowed the entries right down to the 100 photographs that will probably be displayed in an exhibition on the Natural History Museum in London beginning Oct. 16.

“Every year I think the entries to our competition can’t get any stronger… and every year I am proven wrong,” Kathy Moran, the Chair of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Jury, stated in a information launch. “These images pave the way for a deepened appreciation and commitment to our natural world.”

The launched photographs embody a photograph of a polar bear gazing down a seal’s respiration gap within the Arctic sea ice, by Audun Rikardsen; a shot of a rhino and an oxpecker, by Ernest Porter; and a second of a younger leopard chasing a squirrel up a tree in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, by Allegra Hutton.

Here is an early take a look at a number of the photographs within the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026.

See photographs from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026

When will the winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 be introduced?

Winners of within the competitors will probably be introduced Oct. 13 throughout an awards ceremony on the Natural History Museum in London. The ceremony will probably be livestreamed on the museum’s YouTube channel.