The Nature Photographer of the Year 2025 results just dropped, and man, the talent this year is straight-up unreal. Photographers from 96 countries showed up with their A-game, flooding the competition with a record-breaking 24,781 images—each one trying to freeze a wild moment before it vanished. But rising above the madness, the spotlight landed on acclaimed Norwegian photographer Åsmund Keilen, who snagged the prestigious “Nature Photographer of the Year” title with a jaw-dropping, almost celestial shot of a bird slicing through the sky, framed perfectly against a glowing, fiery Sun. It’s the kind of photo that makes you stop, stare, and forget to blink.
Each of the 25 winning images feels like its own wild adventure—icy mountain scenes, deep-forest mysteries, underwater dreamscapes, and wildlife moments so raw they almost feel staged. But that’s the magic of this contest: nothing is staged, nothing is faked. It’s pure nature in all its unpredictable, untamed glory.
Beyond the bragging rights, this competition comes with some seriously sweet rewards. The top prize? A cool €3,000 cash, plus a bunch of epic gear and other cash prizes that would make any nature lover drool. But here’s the classy part: by entering, photographers also help support real conservation efforts around the world. So every snapshot doesn’t just capture nature—it helps protect it.
The award ceremony lit up the annual Nature Talks Photo Festival, where the winning images were showcased in a stunning exhibition. Afterward, the whole collection hits the road, traveling through the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, giving thousands of people a chance to witness nature’s magic up close.
These 25 winning shots are more than photos—they’re reminders of how wild, fragile, and ridiculously beautiful our planet really is.
You can find more info about NPOTY:
#1. Overall Winner: "Sundance" by Asmund Keilen
"The photo was taken just outside Oslo on a hot summer day. I was on my way to the store to buy food. I have a habit of leaving my coffee cup on the roof of my car when unlocking our old blue Mercedes, and more than once I’ve forgotten it there and driven away.
That day, when I backed out of the driveway, the cup tipped over but somehow stayed on the roof. A little discouraged, I reached to pick it up – and immediately saw what would become this photograph. Small orange birch seeds had fallen onto the blue roof during the night, and the summer sun reflected alongside dancing common swifts in the sky. Freedom seemed to take form in chaos.
With the help of in-camera multiple exposure, I was able to recreate what I saw and felt that day: an impression of a reflection – or perhaps a reflection of an impression."
#2. Birds – Runner-Up: "King Penguins by the Pond" by Renato Granieri
"I feel very fortunate to work as a photographer guide on small expedition ships. My lifestyle takes me to some of the most remote destinations, where I feel truly connected with nature. I have visited South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island in the South Atlantic Ocean, on several occasions and spent considerable time photographing king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) from land. Their charm keeps me returning again and again."
#3. Mammals – Winner: "Polar Meal" by Pål Hermansen
"Polar bears face significant challenges due to climate change, one of the most critical being the loss of sea ice. Bears rely on ice to hunt seals, and when the ice disappears during the Arctic summer, many are stranded onshore and unable to hunt. This makes it crucial for them to accumulate enough food in the spring to survive the lean summer months."
#4. Mammals – Runner-Up: "The Hidden Grail of Sumatra Island" by Vladimir Cech Jr
"I will not exaggerate when I say that I have been waiting for this chance not for weeks, not for months, but for years. During the extreme Covid era, I decided to take a risk, overcome all the challenges that accompanied the preparations and the journey itself, and set out for my striped dream in Sumatra. For many years, I had been drawn to the idea of capturing one of the few high resolution photos of the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), a critically endangered subspecies native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is the smallest of the tigers, with stripes closer together and a darker orange coat that blends seamlessly into the tropical rainforest habitat."
#5. Animals – Winner: "Silent Scream" by Bence Máté
"I am grateful for every moment my work allowed me to spend on Bird Island, part of the Seychelles, a tiny island of two kilometres in width made of coral sand. Its wildlife, atmosphere, and overall essence were so vastly different from what I was accustomed to back home that I felt as if I had stepped into a parallel world."
#6. Animals – Runner-Up: "Blue Army" by Imre Potyó
"After several decades of absence, the spectacular and endangered Danube mayfly (Ephoron virgo) returned to the River Danube in 2012, likely due to improving water quality. This species had disappeared from Central European rivers for decades as a result of water pollution."
#7. Plants and Fungi – Winner: "Inferno" by Tobias Richter
"Blazing flames, glowing tree trunks, and illuminated plumes of smoke. In July 2022, the Elbe Sandstone Mountains experienced their largest documented forest fire. A natural disaster of this magnitude in the core area of my daily photographic work was hard to imagine, despite the known circumstances."
#8. Plants and Fungi – Runner-Up: "In The Flow of Time" by Balázs Ravasz
"One summer evening, I was photographing water knotweed (Polygonum amphibium) at Lake Külső in Tihany, Hungary, when I noticed that the pollen on the water’s surface was drifting with the increasing wind. I captured this delicate scene using a long shutter speed."
#9. Landscape – Winner: "Time For a Drop" by Alexander Hormann
"Like sand trickling through an hourglass, the water drips down from an ice-framed viewing window into a dwindling, crystal-blue world. In the summer of 2023, my girlfriend Lisa and I went on a three-week hiking trip through northern Norway, mainly to cross the Lofoten Islands on foot. After enjoying two weeks of wonderful views of mountains, beaches, and the Atlantic Ocean, my girlfriend expressed the desire to visit a glacier, as she had never done so before."
#10. Landscape – Runner-Up: "Cono de Arita" by Ignacio Palacios
"Anticrepuscular Rays is an image of the Cono de Arita that I captured with my Mavic 4 Pro in the remote region of La Puna, Argentina. The Cono de Arita is one of those surreal places that feels as if it were dropped straight out of a dream or a sci-fi film. Rising almost 200 metres from the middle of the vast Arizaro Salt Flat in north-western Argentina, this near-perfect cone stands completely alone in the landscape. It looks exactly like a volcano but surprisingly, it isn’t. It’s made of rock and salt, not lava. Its symmetry and isolation make it visually striking and a bit mysterious. Locals consider it a sacred site."
#11. Underwater – Winner: "Featherhome" by Luis Arpa Toribio
"I’ve always been fascinated by the smallest creatures of the reef, those that most divers overlook. For a long time, I had imagined photographing these tiny critters from their own perspective, to show what their miniature world might look like if you were right there with them."
#12. Underwater – Runner-Up: "Jellyfish Watercolour" by Alex Varani
"While diving on the reef off Misool Island, Indonesia, I encountered a mass aggregation of jellyfish from the Pelagiidae family (cf. Pelagia noctiluca or Sanderia malayensis). Thousands of these creatures drifted with the gentle current just a few meters from the reef wall."
#13. Nature Art- Winner: "Moose in Snow" by Pål Hermansen
"Over many years, I have set up several cameras with infrared sensors near my home in southern Norway. Usually, these are ordinary cameras placed in waterproof cases, but there are also a few trail cameras among them. One of the benefits of the trail cameras is that they feature an infrared flash, invisible to animals and especially useful during wintertime."
#14. Nature Art- Runner-Up: "Injured Guillemot" by Knut-Sverre Horn
"I thought the guillemot was about to die when I found it lying still on the ground, partly covered in blood running from its right eye, on Hornøya, Varanger, Northern Norway. An hour earlier, I had been quite annoyed to realize that my brand-new macro lens was still in the camera bag, as I don’t like to haul around more gear than I’ll actually use. Now, the lens came in handy after all. The drops of blood made a striking contrast against the dark brown and white feathers."
#15. Human and Nature – Winner: "Difficult Crossing" by Xingchao Zhu
"This image was taken in March last year in Dulan County, Qinghai Province, China. Located on the Tibetan Plateau, the high altitude and harsh weather make everything challenging, including photographing wildlife. Although the Eurasian lynx is not as rare as the Iberian lynx, encountering one still requires great patience and a good deal of luck. Between March and April, their mating season, a Eurasian lynx was seen crossing a wire fence in a pastoral area while searching for a mate. The fragmentation of its territory makes survival increasingly difficult for wild animals."
#16. Human and Nature – Runner-Up: "Climate Protection Measurements" by Tobias Buettel
"For my photo project Melting Giants, I visited the Rhône Glacier in Switzerland in 2023. The glacier is known for its lower section being covered with geotextiles, intended to delay the melting of the ice and preserve the man-made ice cave that is carved into the glacier each year. Every year, thousands of tourists pay an entrance fee to visit the cave and marvel at the glacier’s beauty. To me, however, this place symbolised the inadequacy of our climate protection measures."
#17. Black and White – Winner: "The Way of The Ridge" by Sebastiaan van der Greef
"The fox walks where stone meets sky; in stillness, all paths unfold. This image was captured during a journey with my father and brother, as we travelled by boat through the Arctic waters surrounding Svalbard. On the final days of our voyage, we set foot on land in search of the elusive Arctic fox."
#18. Black and White – Runner-Up: "Night Swan Lake" by Mateusz Matysiak
"The fish ponds of the Barycz Valley, where I grew up, have always been one of the main breeding grounds for Mute Swans in Poland. During my school years, I spent most of my time in my valley counting water birds, especially swans, geese, and ducks."
#19. Animals portraits – Winner: "Shared Wonder" by Mary Schrader
"Beneath the lush canopy of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda, I observed a young female mountain gorilla from the Binyindo family gently nestled against the protective bulk of a silverback. The atmosphere was serene, filled with the soft sounds of the forest, until a sudden burst of delicate color broke through the calm."
#20. Animals portraits – Runner-Up: "Beast in Black" by Daniela Graf
"The alpine longhorn beetle (Rosalia alpina) is one of my favourite animals to photograph. I’m completely in love with these very impressive blue beetles, especially their long antennae. On this day, a female beetle with beautifully curved antennae sat on a log in the shadows. I decided to underexpose the picture to emphasise the blue colour against a black background. The title of the image refers to a Finnish metal band."
#21. Nature of “De Lage landen” – Winner: "Bike Tides" by Sam Mannaerts
"This image was taken last winter during one of the only two snow days in Belgium. I live in Steendorp, about 100 metres from a river inlet (the Scheldt), where you can easily observe the tides. When I saw the low tide and the snow-covered patterns in the sludge, I decided to briefly fly the drone."
#22. Nature of “De Lage landen” – Runner-Up: "Jackdaws at Dusk" by Mathijs Frenken
"To capture the feeling of dusk, I combined two different techniques in a multiple exposure. First, I used a long exposure with intentional camera movement (ICM) to blur the background trees into soft, painterly streaks of colour, creating an abstract, dreamy atmosphere. Then, I took a second, shorter exposure of the jackdaws in the trees. By layering these two images, the sharp silhouettes of the birds contrast beautifully with the hazy backdrop. The result is a moody and serene image that captures the quiet moment when the birds settle down for the night."
#23. Youth – Winner: "Panning Bobcat" by Leo Dale
"I am very lucky to have spent dozens of hours in the field with bobcats along the California coast. As with every subject, there are certain highly improbable shots that you may dream of but never succeed in capturing. This picture, a sharp panning shot of a bobcat with prey, was one of those dreams."
#24. Youth – Runner-Up: "On Gulliver’s Back" by Merennege Chamathki Induwara Fernando
"I was deep inside Kumana National Park on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka one quiet evening, patiently waiting by a waterhole after hearing a sudden alarm call, a likely sign that a leopard was nearby. My camera was ready, heart racing, eyes scanning the fading light for any movement in the bush. But just as the sun dipped low and bathed the landscape in golden light, something entirely unexpected drew my focus away from the shadows: a cluster of tiny frogs, glistening like bronze beads, perched on the back of a water buffalo."
#25. Fred Hazelhoff Portfolio Award: "Flowerscapes" by Theo Bosboom
"What would an ant see if it looked up while walking through a field of flowers? Or a ladybird resting for a moment on the stem of a flower? How fantastic would it be if you could photograph this view! Until recently, you could only dream and imagine it. But some time ago, when a long, narrow, wide-angle macro lens that can rotate 360 degrees came onto the market, photographer Theo Bosboom saw an opportunity to make that dream a reality. Bosboom said, “It was as if I had been given the key to a wonderful secret world — I felt very privileged and excited!”"
