WPY 2026: Wildlife Photographer of the Year Names Its Winners on 13 October

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Sign in Welcome! Log into your account your username your password Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password your email A password will be e-mailed to you. HomeNews WPY 2026: Wildlife Photographer of the Year Names Its Winners on 13 October By Amy Porter October 10, 2026 FacebookXPinterestWhatsApp Many wildlife photographers work for hours behind a long telephoto lens. Quick Facts:

The winners of WPY 2026, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest, stay secret until Tuesday 13 October, when the Natural History Museum names them at a ceremony in London. A YouTube livestream carries the ceremony, and Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin host. Six days later, the next competition opens.

The entry numbers show why the prize matters. According to the museum, the jury judged 65,403 entries from 121 countries and territories. As a result, only about 100 images reach the exhibition, which opens on Friday 16 October.

Until the reveal, this guide covers what is public: the dates, the sneak-peek images, the rules behind them and the entry window for 2027.

One practical note first. Wildlife shooters spend long hours outdoors, so three items earn space in your bag: a monopod for heavy telephotos, rain sleeves for wet days and a fast SD card for burst shooting. Here are three picks.

The schedule runs from this week into next summer. Below, the table lists the dates from the museum’s press release. For US readers, 11:30 GMT is 07:30 Eastern Time on 19 October and 06:30 Eastern Time on 3 December.

Tickets are on sale now. Adults pay £19.00, concessions £15.20 and children £9.50. Off-peak adult tickets cost £17.00, while the museum notes weekends sell out quickly. Doors open daily from 10:00 to 17:50, with last admission at 16:30.

If London is out of reach, the museum plans a UK and international tour. However, it has not named venues or dates yet.

These pictures are not the winners. A discoverwildlife.com preview of 16 Highly Commended images shows how varied the techniques are. For example, Audun Rikardsen’s Icy Window shows a polar bear looking into an ice hole north of Svalbard. Capturing it took a motion-sensor underwater camera and eight hours.

Other credits point to different tools. Andrew Parkinson shot Wings of Darkness with a long telephoto. It shows a black vulture over a caiman carcass in the Pantanal. Meanwhile, Andrea and Maceo Grammatico used a focus stack for Biting Back. In it, a mosquito feeds on a fer-de-lance viper.

Young photographers also appear in the set. In the 11 to 14 age group, Sora Miyazawa used a slow shutter for Urban Wanderer, a toad in Tokyo. Jack Crockford photographed swifts near London Heathrow Airport for The Art of Flying, in the 15 to 17 age group.

At D’Arros Island in the Seychelles, Shane Gross flipped the camera upside down for Calm Amid the Storm. This helped with buoyancy, and the picture shows a school of bigeye trevally at dawn as a storm approaches. Several credits point to one deliberate choice made before the shutter fired. If you shoot birds in flight like Crockford’s swifts, start with our birds in flight camera settings guide. For the habit behind shots like these, read our guide to patience over gear in wildlife photography.

An anonymous jury judges pictures like these. The museum lists creativity, originality, technical excellence and storytelling. Meanwhile, the formal competition rules name originality, narrative and ethical practice.

Ethics carry real weight. The rules bar baiting with food, feeders, scent or sound, and they exclude captive, restrained or manipulated animals. Specifically, they name low or noisy drone flights and wide-angle lenses at nests or dens as prohibited. Read our wildlife photography safe distance rules before your next outing.

Editing has limits as well. The rules allow tone and contrast changes, cropping, sharpening, noise reduction, stitched panoramas, focus stacking and exposure blending. They prohibit composites, added or removed objects, and AI-generated images. Tools such as Google’s SynthID Detector now check files for Google’s invisible AI watermark, so honest files matter more.

Shortlisted entrants must supply RAW files or untouched original JPEGs, so keep every original. Store a second copy on a portable SSD. Here are three backup drives.

The next wildlife photography competition opens on Monday 19 October at 11:30 GMT and closes on Thursday 3 December. Adult entrants must be 18 or over. Entry costs a one-off £35, and you submit up to 25 photographs across all categories. The fee is waived for entrants aged 18 to 26 and for applicants from listed countries. Photographers under 18 enter the Young competition instead.

The adult competition has 16 categories, including Animal Portraits, Behaviour: Birds, Under Water and Urban Wildlife. Photos must come from after October 2021, according to the rules. Also, the jury strongly favors images not already awarded in similar competitions. My advice: lead with frames no other contest has awarded. Pick your shortlist this week, check each file against the editing limits and export it before the window opens.

Prepare your files early, because the rules ask for JPEGs at 1920 pixels on the longest side in Adobe RGB. Frames also need to be free of borders, watermarks and signatures. Your name must stay out of the caption, image and metadata because judging is anonymous. If you want a lighter contest, see our Comedy Wildlife Awards 2026 finalists report.

For me, the preview shows what good wildlife photography asks of you: time, restraint and a clear idea. Eight hours behind one frame, a careful stack and a slow shutter all serve the picture. None of it depends on a longer gear list.

So watch the livestream on 13 October, then compare the winners with the preview images. Look for the same patience in them. Entrants have until 3 December, which leaves time to sort your originals and write honest captions. Set aside one weekend this fall to choose your best frames.

The museum announces them on Tuesday 13 October 2026 at a ceremony in London. Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin host, and the museum streams it live on YouTube.

You will find it at the museum in London from Friday 16 October 2026 until Sunday 11 July 2027. A UK and international tour is planned, but the museum has not named venues yet.

The jury judged 65,403 images from 121 countries and territories. About 100 images reach the exhibition.

Entries open on Monday 19 October 2026 and close on Thursday 3 December 2026, both at 11:30 GMT. Entrants pay £35 for up to 25 images, while those aged 18 to 26 enter free.