Visually, this year’s selection was shaped by several major thematic axes: migration and state policies (deportations, borders, fractured families), wars and humanitarian crises in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and Palestine, justice and collective memory (survivors of state violence, marginalized communities), the climate crisis (wildfires, collapsing ecosystems), and civic resistance and identity (protests, rights, traditions).

World Press Photo organizers emphasized that the 2026 selection reflects “conflict and crisis, but also resistance, resilience, and hidden traditions,” highlighting a world simultaneously marked by fragmentation and a search for dignity.

The top honor went to Carol Guzy for her photograph “Separated by ICE,” taken in New York inside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Charged with emotional intensity, the image captures the devastating moment a family is torn apart: Luis, an Ecuadorian migrant, is detained by ICE agents immediately after a hearing while his children cling desperately to him.

The photograph transforms an institutional hallway into a stage for bureaucratic violence, where family trauma becomes the expression of state policy. The jury recognized both the image’s emotional force and its global relevance.

Carol Guzy stated:

“This award highlights the critical importance of the story worldwide. We bear witness to the suffering of countless families, but also to their grace and resilience that transcends adversity in a profoundly humbling way. The courage to open up their lives to our cameras allowed us to tell their stories. Certainly, this award belongs to them, not me.”

World Press Photo Executive Director Joumana El Zein Khoury added:

“This image shows the inconsolable grief of children losing their father in a place built for justice. It is a stark and necessary record of family separation following US reform policies. In a democracy, the camera’s presence in that hallway serves as a witness to a policy that has turned courthouses into sites of shattered lives — a powerful example of why independent photojournalism matters.”

Saber Nuraldin’s finalist photograph documents the desperation of Palestinians struggling to obtain food and humanitarian aid in Gaza. The image functions as a stark visual diagnosis of humanitarian collapse, where survival itself becomes an act of mortal risk.

Victor J. Blue was recognized for portraying Maya Achi women, survivors of sexual violence during Guatemala’s civil war, within the context of legal struggle and the restoration of dignity. The work shifts the focus from victimhood to historical justice.

Global jury chair Kira Pollack articulated perhaps the defining thesis of this year’s edition:

“They go because they believe that seeing matters. That evidence matters.”

“Photojournalism has never been easy work. It has never been lucrative, or safe, or guaranteed an audience. And yet photographers go. To the courthouses and the conflict zones, to the quiet corners of the world where history is being made without witnesses.”

This statement defines the entire edition: photojournalism is not merely aesthetics, but evidence, memory, and public responsibility. The jury underscored that awarded photographers continue to go “to courthouses, conflict zones, and the quiet corners where history is written without witnesses,” reaffirming the role of the image as testimony.

For 71 years, the annual World Press Photo Contest has honored the most important achievements in photojournalism and documentary photography from the previous year, reinforcing its position as one of the world’s most prestigious international platforms dedicated to the image as a witness to contemporary history. Year after year, it offers a visual map of a world marked by fractures, urgency, and crisis, but also by profound human resilience.

The Photo of the Year winner and the two finalists were selected from all awarded images produced in 2025. Beyond its competitive dimension, World Press Photo also functions as a vast global cultural circulation project: the awarded images are brought together in the World Press Photo Yearbook 2026, published in six languages, and featured in the traveling World Press Photo Exhibition 2026, presented in more than 60 cities worldwide. After its world premiere in Amsterdam at De Nieuwe Kerk on April 24, these images continue their global journey, transforming photojournalism into a shared space for reflection on the history we are living.

Europe was strongly represented both through photographs depicting the war in Ukraine, migration, and political tensions, and through the cultural infrastructure that enables these images to circulate. In a continental context still shaped by war at its borders, the rise of extremism, and debates around identity, Europe’s presence in this year’s selection functioned less as self-assurance and more as a space for critical reflection.

In a year dominated by systemic violence and global insecurity, World Press Photo 2026 offers not comfort, but confrontation: with the image, with politics, and with our own capacity to look.

See all the photographs and discover their stories on the official World Press Photo platform and its social channels.