World Press Photo have announced the winners of the 2025 World Press Photo competition. The overall World Press Photo of the Year winner will be announced on 17th April at the press opening of the Flagship World Press Photo Exhibition 2025 at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and online simultaneously. Every winning photographer is eligible for the Photo of the Year award.
This year, more winning projects and photographers are celebrated, with the winners list growing from 33 total winners in 2024 to 42. For the past three years, there has been one winning Single and one winning Story per region. Beginning in 2025, there will be three winners in each of these categories per region. There will also continue to be one Long-Term Project winner per region.
Gathered from across 2024’s fast changing political and media landscape, the photos invite viewers to step outside the news cycle, and look more deeply at both prominent and less seen stories from across the world as well as look again at familiar events. Key themes this year range from politics, and gender, and migration, to conflict, and the climate crisis. Images of protests and uprisings in Kenya, Myanmar, Haiti, El Salvador and Georgia, sit alongside unexpected portraits of those in political power in the USA and Germany. With perspectives from a range of people including: Tamale Safale, the first disabled athlete ever in Uganda to compete against able bodied athletes, a Palestinian child coping with amputation after injury in Gaza and a young Ukrainian girl traumatised by war. The delicate and often fraught relationship between humans and animals, and secret celebrations of Pride in Lagos, Nigeria, are also recognised.
The 2025 Contest also takes place as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations for World Press Photo – providing an opportunity to view these stories in a historical perspective. The contest is increasingly globally representative in recent years and this year, 30 out of 42 winners were also local to the country where they photographed their project.
Executive Director World Press Photo, Joumana El Zein Khoury said:
The world is not the same as it was in 1955 when World Press Photo was founded. We live in a time when it is easier than ever to look away, to scroll past, to disengage. But these images do not let us do that. They cut through the noise, forcing us to acknowledge what is unfolding, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it makes us question the world we live in – and our own role within it.
The awarded stories will be shown to millions as part of the World Press Photo annual traveling exhibition in over 60 locations around the world. Millions more will see the winning stories online.
The awarded photographs were selected from 59,320 entries received from 3,778 photographers from 141 countries. They were judged first by six regional juries, and the winners were then chosen by an independent global jury consisting of the regional jury chairs plus the global jury chair.
Global jury chair, Lucy Conticello, Director of Photography for M, Le Monde’s weekend magazine, said:
We made our choices with an eye on the final mix. As much as the World Press Photo Contest award is an immense recognition for photographers, often working under difficult circumstances, it is also a recap of the world’s major events, however incomplete. As a jury we were looking for pictures that people can start conversations around.
View all the winning images here.
World Press Photo 2025: exhibition returns to London
The awarded images and stories will be shown worldwide as part of World Press Photo’s annual traveling exhibition in over 60 locations around the world – including the world premiere exhibition in Amsterdam at De Nieuwe Kerk (18 April – 21 September); followed by London (23 May – 25 August); and Rome (6 May – 8 June), Berlin (6 June – 29 June); Vienna (12 September – 9 November); Budapest (10 September – 9 November); Mexico City (18 July – 28 September); Rio de Janeiro (27 May – 20 July); Montreal (27 August – 11 October); Jakarta (12 September – 11 October) and Sydney (24 May – 6 July).
The prestigious World Press Photo Exhibition returns to London this summer for a three-month run at the new MPB Gallery at Here East (on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park). This powerful exhibition offers an unmissable visual journey through the defining moments shaping our world today.
Following the 2024 tour, which attracted over 3 million visitors across 66 locations worldwide, the exhibition continues to set the gold standard for visual storytelling. Since its inception in 1955, the World Press Photo Foundation has been at the forefront of impactful journalism, ensuring that critical global stories are seen and heard through breathtaking imagery. The London Exhibition Director, Woody Anderson, expressed his enthusiasm “We are thrilled to bring this remarkable exhibition back to London for a second consecutive year. After a seven-year absence from the country, its successful reintroduction in 2024 reaffirmed its status as a must-see cultural event. We are excited to continue building its legacy as an essential highlight in the UK’s cultural calendar.”
The exhibition will open to the public from 23rd May to 25th August 2025 where attendees can take an unforgettable journey through the lenses of the world’s leading photographers. Tickets available HERE.
See more of the best photography exhibitions to see
Featured image: Sambaza, a sardine local to the waters of Lake Kivu, are captured in a net. Several factors, including overfishing and the presence of gas extraction plants, threaten the sambaza population. Goma, DRC, 20 March 2024. The Lake Has Fallen Silent © Aubin Mukoni
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