Photography has a wonderful way of bringing different perspectives, cultures, and stories together. The 1839 Awards have announced the winners of its 2026 Photographer of the Year contest, celebrating outstanding creative talent from nearly 80 countries. This year’s competition features an impressive collection of photographs across multiple categories, with both Professional and Non-Professional photographers earning recognition.
From breathtaking wildlife encounters and atmospheric landscapes to creative conceptual work and compelling street photography, the winning images showcase the incredible diversity of contemporary photography.
Each photograph offers a fresh perspective and reminds us how powerful a single frame can be. We’ve handpicked 40 remarkable winning photographs for 121Clicks, but there’s plenty more to explore. Head over to the official 1839 Awards website to discover all the winners, organized by category.
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Overall Winner
Giacomo Marchione wins International Photographer of the Year 2026 with The Invisible, a captivating underwater photography series revealing glowing marine organisms against dark ocean backgrounds.
#1. International Photographer of the Year: The Invisible by Giacomo Marchione
At night, the sea doesn’t sleep.When the sun sets and the sea seems to fall silent, one of nature’s most extraordinary spectacles begins: the vertical migration of plankton. Millions of organisms rise from the depths to the surface, and in this upward migration.
#2. Abstract – Photographer of the Year: Swarm by Mark Gray
Incredible colours and textures appear in Lake Tyrrell after the winter rains begin to subside. During this visit, I discovered a map of mainland Australia.
#3. Abstract – Silver: The Shape of Light by Marek Boguszak
This series explores the transformation of light into form. Through layering, transparency, and abstraction, photography moves beyond representation, revealing a visual language where organic forms and geometry exist in quiet balance between perception and memory.
#4. Abstract – Bronze: Ghost Blossom by Marcel van Beek
In this diptych, flowering umbels shift from recognisable form into spectral motion. What begins as a botanical presence becomes a flickering field of memory and disappearance, where beauty hovers between apparition, breath and trace.
#5. Aerial – Silver: First Journey by Stanislav Stelmakhovich
Humpback mother travels with her newborn calf, born along the migration route itself. Their first journey begins in open ocean, where the calf must learn to follow its mother across the sea.
#6. Aerial – Bronze: Fairytale by Mark Gray
Minas De Rio Tinto is one of the oldest mines in the world. Still in operation today, flying over the tailing ponds reveals a vast array of colourful shapes and patterns. Can you see the fairy?
#7. Architecture – Photographer of the Year: Dragon Gates of Hong Kong by Derry Ainsworth
This series explores a unique Feng Shui design principle in Hong Kong. Voids known as dragon gates 龍門 are built into coastal high-rises so spirit dragons can fly from the mountains to the sea. Each image frames a different view, contrasting dense modern architecture with ancient culture.
#8. Architecture – Silver: The Broom at Rialto by Josello Arends
An empty arcade, a forgotten broom, and the Rialto Bridge waiting for the day to begin. Framed through the arches, this early-morning scene holds the quiet moment between Venice asleep and Venice awake.
#9. Architecture – Bronze: European architecture by Eric Chatelain
A selection of modern architecture seen in Scandinavia.
#10. Conceptual – Photographer of the Year: Inherited Presence by Sabrina Charehbili
*Inherited Presence* explores body, landscape, and inherited identity through poetic images created in Morocco. Moving between water, desert, textiles, and human presence, the series reflects on memory, transformation, and the connection between culture, place, and belonging.
#11. Conceptual – Silver: Reflecting New York by Stefan Falke
Using a hand held mirror in locations around New York, photographer Stefan Falke’s goal is to visually loosen up the obvious, to create images that will surprise and intrigue the viewer, and himself. By deliberately showing his hand holding the mirror he adds a story-telling quality to the images.
#12. Conceptual – Bronze: Echoes of a Fading Land by Lena Konstantakou
Echoes of a Fading Land explores heritage as a bridge between past and present. Inspired by Greek poetry, I turn traces of my grandparents’ old house in Krokees into handmade cyanotypes. The work imagines heritage as a garden of memory, inviting us to tend what we inherit so it may grow beyond us.
#13. Domestic Animals – Photographer of the Year: Sweethearts in the Window by Andrew Raven
For one Mayfair morning, Sweethearts appeared from every window.
#14. Domestic Animals – Silver: Beyond the Trail by Maxime Tremblay
In southern Québec, Beyond the Trail follows a musher and his sled dogs through quiet moments of trust and the rush of the trail. Blending action with intimate observation, the series explores companionship, endurance, and the bond between human, working animal, and winter landscape.
#15. Domestic Animals – Bronze: First Impressions by Jessica Carlson
Born and bred to be great upland bird dogs, two young Brittany puppies lay eyes on a Bobwhite Quail for the first time.
#16. Event – Photographer of the Year: Half second before by Natalya Pyrogova
Half second before the incident and rescue.
#17. Event – Silver: Sparks of Tradition by Liang Chou Shih
Captured during a traditional Datiehua performance, molten iron explodes into a striking shower of golden sparks. Through precise timing and dynamic intensity, the performer’s silhouette against the fiery blaze honours centuries of cultural heritage and the sheer power of human craftsmanship.
#18. Event – Bronze: Shower of Sparks by Yoshimasa Kako
This is a traditional Japanese festival that has prayed for the well-being of the local community and families for 700 years. Young men parade through the streets while being showered with sparks.
#19. Fashion & Beauty – Photographer of the Year: Anjali by Samantha Wolov
I’m a fine art photographer and art director with a deep love for beauty—its textures, contradictions, and emotional resonance. With a background in art history and studio art, I approach photography through a visual language shaped by centuries of artistic exploration.
#20. Fashion & Beauty – Silver: Salt Lines by Emily Hlavac Green
Artist from New Zealand, based in New York.
#21. Fashion & Beauty – Bronze: A Quiet State by Stefan Groepper
A body of work rooted in presence rather than narration. Bodies, landscapes and elements appear with equal weight, emerging as states of being rather than symbolic readings. The figures are often turned inward; movement is reduced to posture, balance and breath.
#22. Fashion & Beauty – People’s Vote Award: Lake Series by Ieva Lukyte
Lake Stories was made in Lithuania at the end of summer. Growing up, summers there always revolved around the lake. In this series I wanted to treat it as a place of being rather than doing, stepping in fully clothed and letting the water bring out colours and shapes you wouldn’t otherwise see.
#23. Film/Analog – Photographer of the Year: Year of the Cicada by Emily Hlavac Green
Year of the Cicada follows my return to Aotearoa after a decade in New York. Guided by the familiar hum of cicadas, the photographs move through domestic rituals, changing landscapes and generations, considering how distance reshapes memory, makes home foreign and complicates belonging.
#24. Film/Analog – Bronze: This Room Will Survive Me by Cindy Konits
Architecture is more than what we see. As part of our psychological infrastructure it shapes and is shaped by how we feel, and remember. The images are a visual metaphor for the psychological experience of architecture.
#25. Film/Analog – People’s Vote Award: Heritahe In Faces by Agnieszka Trzoch
Heritage In Faces | Echoes Of Poland portrays people preserving Poland’s cultural heritage through dance, song, craftsmanship, stories, and traditions. These traditions reflect generations before us and remain part of who we are today. Portraits of members of the Krakowiacy Song and Dance Ensemble.
#26. Landscapes – Photographer of the Year: Little Bird by Anne Neiwand
A raven stands alone on a vast glacial snowfield, its iridescent black plumage the only dark note in a world of white. Behind it, ancient ice glows electric blue where the glacier has cracked open — a landscape vast and indifferent, and one small, still creature utterly at home within it.
#27. Landscapes – Silver: The Mitten by Bob Maynard
Bob Maynard is a national award-winning photographer who founded Colorado Plateau Photo Tours in 2009 and has been guiding and instructing photographers ever since.
#28. Landscapes – Bronze: Misty forest by Seppo Kerkelä
Captured in Kuusamo, Finland, on a misty September morning just as the rising sun turned the river valley into glowing shades of gold. Photographed from a high rocky viewpoint overlooking the landscape, the elevated perspective enhances the layered depth of fog, forest, and light.
#29. Macro – Photographer of the Year: Angle of Extinction by Bevil Templeton-Smith
Crystals grown on glass slides and photographed in polarised light through a 1970 Leitz Orthoplan. The colour is interference, not applied, and is visible down the microscope. The field of view is three to four millimetres. Printed, the same image goes up to 1.5 metres wide.
#30. Macro – Silver: Ant with the moon by Cristian Martínez Blanco
My first steps with a camera stemmed from a curiosity to capture those small details that often go unnoticed. My exploration encompasses various photographic styles: macro, portraits, abstract, minimalist, street, and conceptual, always with a touch of noir, expressionism, ethereal quality, and pictorialism.
#31. Macro – Bronze: Emerald Guardian by Thi Thuy Phan
A tree frog emerges from the darkness, its vivid green colors and piercing eyes capturing a quiet moment of curiosity in the rainforest.
#32. Minimalism – Photographer of the Year: Shadowplay by Yevhen Kostiuk
My name is Yevhen Kostiuk, and I am a Ukrainian award-winning photographer from Kharkiv. My passion for photography began a long time ago, but I seriously started pursuing it only in the last few years.
#33. Nature – Photographer of the Year: Murmur in Ostuni by Malin Brand
Murmuration in Ostuni, Apulia, Italy, January 22, 2026 – half an hour before sunset.
#34. Nature – Silver: Penguins on Blue Ice by Cathy Vercoe
A minimalist wildlife photograph of four penguins perched on a vast blue iceberg, framed by sculpted ice textures.
#35. Street – Photographer of the Year: A fleeting dream by Haishan Chen
These photos show Guangzhou’s Soviet-style 1950s elephant slides, our shared childhood memory. Most were demolished amid fast urban construction.Seeing the remaining ones makes me lost，time flies too fast, and those old days feel like a fleeting dream.
#36. Street – Silver: Splendid Isolation by Jeremy C Glover
Deep shadows and strong sunlight reveal the smallest glimpses of people going about their day – a gentle gait, the turn of a page, the draw of a cigarette – transforming fleeting street moments into timeless, cinematic, colour noire narratives that leave the viewer curious for more.
#37. Travel – Photographer of the Year: Morning on the Lake by Leah Snow
A young boy paddles his first canoe.
#38. Wildlife – Photographer of the Year: Pass By by Xiaoping Lin
The big fish chased the small fish and rushed out of the water together, passing the egret. The egret looked surprised and did not know where the small fish would go? Just like a poem: I passed you by. You hurried here. Before I noticed, you had gone far away, leaving me a regretful back.
#39. Wildlife – Bronze: Wildebeest Migration by William Chua
William Chua is a Fujifilm ambassador for more than 10 years. He is an international award winning photographer based in Singapore. He does predominantly weddings, portraits, travels and wildlife photography.
#40. Wildlife – Bronze: Held Ground by Vasilis Moustakas
Held Ground is a portrait of the Serengeti kopjes, granite islands rising out of a sea of grass, made through the animals that live on them. For lions the rock is shade, a lookout over the plain, a hidden place for cubs. Black and white, printed in silver gelatin.
Editor’s Summary
The 2026 1839 Awards celebrate creativity, originality, and photographic excellence from around the world. Congratulations to all the talented photographers whose incredible work earned recognition this year!
- Celebrating global photographic talent.
- Recognizing creativity across multiple genres.
- Showcasing professional and emerging photographers.
- Inspiring fresh perspectives and visual storytelling.
- Congratulations to all the 2026 winners!
