NATIONAL & REGIONAL AWARDS: WINNERS ANNOUNCED

The Sony World Photography Awards announce today the 2026 National and Regional Award winners and shortlists, recognising remarkable photographic talent from across the globe selected from the Awards’ competitions. South African photographer Greg du Toit has won in the Open Competition, under the Natural World & Wildlife category. Du Toit won for his image titled ‘Stealth’, which was captured in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. “As a proud South African, I was especially pleased to hear that I had won the national award for my country. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my work and be recognised by such a renowned institution” says du Toit.

The National & Regional Awards programme is an initiative set up by Sony and Creo under its photography strand, the World Photography Organisation, to support local photographic communities around the world. Across this year’s competitions, over 430,000 images from over 200 countries and territories were submitted.

National and Regional Award winners were chosen from the Open, Professional and Student competitions this year highlighting global talent across a span of career stages. All single country National Award winners and 1st Place Regional Award winners are featured in the exhibition and receive Sony Digital Imaging equipment. The Professional Award winners and European Student Award shortlist are invited to participate in dedicated workshop days in London.

PROFESSIONAL COMPETITION

The Professional competition includes the Latin America Professional Award, the Japan National Award, and new to 2026, the India National Award.

The Latin America Professional Award celebrates dynamic and inspiring photographic work currently created within the region. This year Citlali Fabian (Mexico) is awarded 1st Place for Bilha, Stories of my Sisters, which blends portraits and digital illustrations to bring to life the stories of inspiring women in southern Mexico, collaborating with activists and artists from Indigenous communities in the region. María Fernanda García Freire (Ecuador) is awarded 2nd Place for Study on Flying, a deeply personal project born from the photographer’s observations of her son’s admiration for birds. André Tezza (Brazil) is awarded 3rd Place for Everyday Structures, shining a light on the modest architecture of neighbourhood grocery stores in southern Brazil.

The shortlisted photographers for the Latin America Professional Award are:

• Sebastian Di Domenico (Colombia)
• Sergio Meléndez Cava (Peru)
• Yris Pablo (Venezuela)
• Manuel Seoane (Bolivia)
• Bienvenido Velasco (Panama)
• Benjamin Villela (Chile)
• Irina Werning (Argentina)

The India National Award recognises outstanding series by Indian photographers entering the Professional Competition. The inaugural winner is Avijit Ghosh for the series Keepers of Mangroves, which captures the conservation efforts of ‘tiger widows’ in Dayapur, India, where women who have lost their husbands to tiger attacks are helping to restore the tigers’ mangrove ecosystems, to try to alleviate conflict with the animals.

The 2026 winner of the Japan National Award is Hayate Kurisu, for the series Living Photographs, which documents the experience of the photographer and his wife following the loss of a child to stillbirth, and the days spent together as a family before the cremation, exploring photography’s relationship to time and grief. With series ranging from explorations of local traditional costumes, to still lifes inspired by the structure of haiku poetry, and the stillness of the Antarctic landscape, the shortlisted photographers for the Japan National Award are:

• Mitsuaki Fujiwara
• Hajime Hirano
• Keiichiro Muramatsu

STUDENT COMPETITION

New to the 2026 Awards, the European Student Award recognises outstanding student projects, spotlighting the best emerging voices from across Europe from the Student competition. Teresa Halbreiter (Germany, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg) is the winner of the inaugural European Student Award for her series Stillgestanden (‘Attention!’), which explores the search for femininity and individuality in the male-dominated institution of the German Armed Forces, underlining the tension between obedience and self-assertion, toughness and vulnerability.

From the aftermath of an environmental disaster, to stories of friendship and building community, the shortlisted photographers each weave compelling narratives of our time:

• Bennet Böckstiegel (Germany, Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie)
• Laurie Broughton (UK, University of West England)
• Laura Anna Rossa (Belgium, LUCA School of Arts Sint Lukas Brussels)
• Albert Słowiński (Poland, Academy of Art in Szczecin)

OPEN COMPETITION

National and Regional Award Winners were chosen from a span of over 30 countries from across the Open competition, which celebrates the best single images from 2025. From sweeping landscapes, to tender portraits, and striking images of the natural world, the winners of the National and Regional Awards from the Open competition exemplify the ability of an individual image to tell a story.

The overall winners in the Student, Youth, Open and Professional competitions of the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 will be announced on 16 April and will go on display as part of the exhibition at Somerset House, London (17 April – 4 May 2026). For more information about upcoming announcements and winners please visit worldphoto.org.

This year’s National & Regional Award winners are:

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