2026 Music Photography Awards Finalists Show There’s Nothing Fairly Like a Concert Experience

Abbey Road Studios has picked the finalists for the 2026 Music Photography Awards after some powerful deliberation from the judges. The competitors can also be marking its fifth 12 months with a visitor class celebrating an iconic music scene. 50 Years of Punk highlights the profound historical past of the style, from its underground roots to rising subgenres, to the way it formed vogue and youth tradition around the globe.

But what the Music Photography Awards actually showcases is the distinctive expertise of stay music. For many, nothing else fairly matches the transcendent vitality of a live performance. That vitality continues to be keenly felt, even when translated into nonetheless pictures. Sometimes it looks like stay music exists in an area past time. Surely the power to listen to {a photograph} doesn’t observe the legal guidelines of physics and actuality.

The award classes embrace Portrait, Music Moment of the Year, Emerging Photographer of the Year, Behind the Scenes, Underground Scenes, and Live Music. According to judges, the competitors was shut. But these finalists symbolize among the greatest music pictures occurring proper now.

Concert Photography Captures Anticipation, Euphoria, and Emotions of the Live Music Experience

The Music Photography Awards ceremony is scheduled for September 24, 2026, with Abbey Road Studios asserting the finalists simply a few weeks earlier than. All remaining entries from every class can be found to view on the official website.

The Portrait class showcases up-close and private compositions with artists like Billy Idol, Warren Ellis, and the OGM of Ho99o9. In the Festivals class, photographers captured Glastonbury and Download Festival, highlighting moments within the crowd.

Music Moment of the Year is the place these photographers actually showcase their expertise. These vary from a second of brotherly reference to Oasis, to Kendrick Lamar’s thematic Super Bowl Halftime Show, to a rowdy Lambrini Girls present with Phoebe Lunny leaping into the gang and Charli XCX burning down Brat.

The Behind the Scenes class additionally options some showstopping imagery. In one entry, Black Honey guitarist/vocalist Izzy Baxter Philips preps for a music video shoot within the doorway of a venue rest room, the partitions coated in stickers and graffiti. Another options Kevin Parker of Tame Impala sitting on the stoop exterior of what appears to be like like a dive bar, however is mostly a pensive second whereas capturing a music video.

One behind-the-scenes picture, captured in black and white, reveals a younger fan’s reflection in a mirror as she does her make-up. Sitting exterior of the venue earlier than a My Chemical Romance live performance with a number of different ladies, this distinctive perspective captures the anticipation of on the point of see a beloved band.

Photo by Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage