A Snap Shot
The Sony World Photography Awards have announced the 30 finalists and 65 shortlisted photographers for the 2026 Professional competition, and we’re privileged to share some of them here with you today.
Across this year’s competitions, over 430,000 images from over 200 countries and territories were submitted. Combined they represent a powerful showcase of visual storytelling that pushes the boundaries of contemporary photography. The categories on display range from architecture to natural wonders to world news.
Chen Liang’s (China Mainland) series explores watchtowers in Jiangmen, in China’s Guangdong Province, a unique blend of Chinese and international architectural influences. In Homes of Haor Joy Saha (Bangladesh) documents the vernacular architecture of Bangladesh’s Haor region, where homes are built on raised mounds that become islands during the monsoon. Andreas Secci’s (Germany) series presents abstract landscapes formed by aerial views of oyster farms on the French coast of Normandy and Brittany. Santiago Mesa’s (Colombia) Under the Shadow of Coca follows the farmers whose livelihoods depend on this illicit economy, and the armed group that controls the cocaine trade in Colombia.
It’s a small global snapshot, and while only a fraction of those selected by Sony are moving forward in the competition, all 430,000 pictures had a story to tell.
Benjamin Pawlica, Mushroom Storm
The mushrooms of this tuft of Hypholoma fasciculare expel their spores synchronously. Growing on a beautiful rotting stump in a deciduous forest, the photographer had to wait for favourable weather conditions in order to capture the cloud of spores carried by a light breeze.
The sporulation of mushrooms is a subtle and fascinating phenomenon that occurs when they reach maturity. As billions of spores take to the air, a carefully placed backlight reveals shimmering clouds of iridescent swirls. Each spore is wrapped in a droplet of water, creating shimmering colours through light diffraction. The photographer has been working on this subject for more than three years, taking every image in a natural environment, without any intervention on the mushroom itself. Magical, scientific and highly technical, this series reveals mushrooms in a completely different light and shows that even these small living beings are capable of putting on a spectacular show.
© Benjamin Pawlica, France, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Wildlife & Nature, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Delfina Pignatiello, Nymphs
Nymphs is an underwater photographic series shot in a swimming pool using a camera in a waterproof housing. Lights were placed outside the water to provide both front and back lighting, with the images of national synchronised swimmers captured using breath-hold immersion.
© Delfina Pignatiello, Argentina, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Sport, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Liam Man, Standing on New Ground
Image Description: At the terminus of the Leones Glacier, freshly exposed bedrock shows where the ice has retreated. The rocks, polished by millennia of glacial abrasion, are now uncovered by the relentless melting. The fractured blue face marks recent calving events, briefly revealing clean ice.
Series Description: The state of Earth’s cryosphere is critical. Anthropogenic activities drive climate change and glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. For the 2025 International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, an expedition set out to photograph an eclipse above the Leones Glacier in Chile, using drone-mounted aerial lights to visually link the Sun’s influence with the loss of glaciers. The Leones Glacier is retreating rapidly. As the glacier thins, unsupported valley walls collapse, covering the surface in dark debris that increases thermal absorption, accelerating melt and driving further instability.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Joy Saha, Elevated Homestead Layout
A homestead built on raised terrain. Its structures, livestock and small garden areas are designed to remain functional during monsoon flooding.
Homes of Haor documents the vernacular architecture of Ashtagram, Kishoreganj, in Bangladesh’s Haor region. Here, homes are built on naturally raised mounds that become islands during the monsoon, surrounded by seasonal floodwater, and boats become the primary means of travel. From above, the settlements form distinct patterns shaped by elevation, water and function. Elevated roads, clustered dwellings, and carefully arranged livestock spaces reveal how rural communities design and adapt their built environment to a landscape defined by water.
© Joy Saha, Bangladesh, Finalist, Professional Competition, Architecture & Design, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Peter Franck, The dream of landscape
‘The individual works in this series are alluring collages that seduce our visual and art historical memory, creating time jumps and exploring new combinations of different genres.’ The photographer explains that the pictures move along the border of photography and painting, presenting nature as seen through the spectacles of our cultural history. The landscape becomes the stage and a storyteller of our existence, yet within the work there is a fragility on display, and it is the viewer’s task to protect it. ‘Sometimes the silence of the sea is lightly broken through a ship, a ghost ship full of stories. Another time the sun seems to draw a trace in dots to the sky.’
© Peter Franck, Germany, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Chen Liang, Chinese Watchtowers
Jin Hong watchtower was built in Kaiping in 1890.
Many of the watchtowers in Jiangmen, in China’s Guangdong Province, were built during the time of the Republic of China (1912–1949), as public refuges and defensive fortresses. Most were constructed by Chinese people living overseas, who had returned to their home towns, or raised funds to build them in the countryside, making them a unique architectural form that combines both Chinese and Western influences. In 2007, the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages in Guangdong were officially designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
© Chen Liang, China Mainland, Finalist, Professional Competition, Architecture & Design, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Luis Henry Agudelo Cano, Flying To Forget
Ten years after combining art and sport at the street circus, Roxana learned the technique of hair suspension.
Roxana grew up dreaming of flying like a butterfly. As a child in rural Colombia, her mother made her colourful wings from paper and plastic to help bring that dream to life, but her flight was short-lived, as armed conflict forced her family to flee to the city of Medellín. Threatened by local paramilitary forces, the family sought asylum in the USA, but when that was refused, they were forced to relocate to Bogotá. When Roxana was 12, her father disappeared and was later murdered; his body was never recovered. Roxana drifted onto the streets and into drug addiction, living in extreme poverty. It was there that she discovered the street circus, which became a refuge for her. Ten years later, she learned ‘hair suspension,’ a circus technique that she describes as meditative, rather than painful. Today, at 31, Roxana is a dance student, continuing to use movement as a way to fulfill her dream of flying.
© Luis Henry Agudelo Cano, Colombia, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Sport, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Yi-Hsuan Lin, Worker
Workers move cautiously across the fractured surface of the solar arrays to clear the debris. From this elevated perspective, human presence appears small and fragile against the scale of environmental destruction.
Series Description: In 2025, a typhoon struck Taiwan, causing severe damage along its southwestern coast. Among the affected areas were the offshore solar panels in Chiayi, which were severely damaged. This series documents the work needed to clean up and recover the debris.
Copyright: © Yi-Hsuan Lin, Taiwan, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Environment, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
David Baxter III, Finger of God
A low precipitation (LP) Supercell with incredible structure produced this highly photogenic tornado in Northwest Oklahoma.
Series Description: Tornado Alley is situated across the central United States of America and can produce some of the wildest weather on the planet. Supercells traverse Tornado Alley during spring and summer, bringing breathtaking scenes as Mother Nature creates unbelievable atmospheric sculptures. The 2025 season was one of the most intense in memory, as several extremely photogenic storms took place.
© David Baxter III, United States, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Hans-Juergen Burkard, Dog Beach
Two German Shepherd dogs and one East German Shepherd dog with their owner, Michael.
Series Description: For around 30,000 years, dogs have been closer to mankind than any other animal. For the photographer of this series, it sometimes seemed that it was not humans who tamed dogs, but dogs who domesticated humans — and both became mirrors of the other. Dog Beach consists of portraits of dogs and their humans, taken at the North Sea coast in Germany. To create his portraits, the photographer asked his human subjects to tell him about their ‘love for dogs’ and then photographed them and their often revealing and humorous interactions with their canine companions.
© Hans-Juergen Burkard, Germany, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Portraiture, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Andreas Secci, Untitled
This series of abstract landscapes depicts oyster farming on the French coast of Normandy and Brittany, where the farms stretch along the entire coastline, shaping the character of the landscape. With a tidal range of up to 12 metres, the oyster beds disappear from view at high tide but are fully exposed at low tide. Yet it is only from a bird’s-eye view that the vastness of these abstract landscapes, reminiscent of Roman legions, can be appreciated.
© Andreas Secci, Germany, Finalist, Professional Competition, Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Santiago Mesa, Untitled
Darwin, a young Venezuelan coca leaf picker (raspachín), rests on freshly harvested coca leaves in Putumayo, Colombia, before they are processed. The raspachín’s work is physically demanding, but the shifts are usually only half a day and are paid in cash. For many migrants, coca harvesting is one of the few reliable sources of income.
In the southern Colombian department of Putumayo, coca cultivation remains one of the few economic options for rural families in this neglected border region. This project follows farmers and families whose livelihoods depend on an illicit economy shaped by poverty, weak state presence, and armed control, as well as members of Comandos de la Frontera, the armed group that controls the territory and the cocaine trade. While some families try legal alternatives, coca often provides the only stable income. Under the Shadow of Coca shows that many of the local producers are not traffickers, but campesinos (farmers), and that it is usually armed groups who profit from the trade of coca.
© Santiago Mesa, Colombia, Finalist, Professional Competition, Documentary Projects, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist, 2D: Frozen World
2D: Frozen World was photographed on the last day that the Icelandic Highlands were open, before heavy snowfall closed the area for the season. The images reveal the black volcanic desert covered by the first frost, which forms sharp, graphic patterns on the dark sand. The contrast flattens depth and scale, transforming the landscape into abstract, near-two-dimensional shapes, like surfaces from another planet. It is a fleeting moment between autumn and winter, frozen in time.
© Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist, Sweden, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Borja Abargues, The River on the Brink of Collapse
Beham watches the Buriganga River flow near Alam Market. He complains: ‘Before, the water was so clear we could see fish. But nowadays you can’t see anything because of the pollution. It’s black and smelly water.’
Series Description: Once the lifeblood of Dhaka, the Buriganga River now flows as a toxic artery through the capital of Bangladesh. Thousands of factories dump untreated chemical waste into its waters, while residents use the river as an open landfill. Years of pollution have erased its flora and fauna, turning the river into a black, foul-smelling stream. The photographer poses the question: ‘Does Bangladesh have time to reverse this collapse?’
© Borja Abargues, Spain, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Environment, Sony World Photography Awards 2026
Fei Xin, Pretend to Be an Animal
Gazing at animals in a zoo, they can sometimes appear far less ‘animal -like’ than we imagine. There may be a sense of authenticity and freedom, but ‘there’s no escaping the fact that this is a designed haven where they want for nothing.’ The photographer compares the zoo to a ‘landscaped theatre of life.’
© Fei Xin, China Mainland, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Wildlife & Nature, Sony World Photography Awards 2026