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Citlali Fabián won Professional Photographer of the Year at the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards for Bilha, Stories of my Sisters, a project created with Indigenous women in southern Mexico. The awards’ four overall competition winners were Fabián, Open winner Elle Leontiev, Student winner Jubair Ahmed Arnob and Youth winner Philip Kangas. Sony reported that the 2026 competitions received more than 430,000 images from over 200 countries and territories.
Who won the Sony World Photography Awards 2026?
Sony announced the overall winners on April 16, 2026. The four winners represent separate competitions, rather than a single contest with identical entry formats.
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| Competition or recognition | Winner | Work or distinction |
|---|---|---|
| Professional Photographer of the Year | Citlali Fabián | Bilha, Stories of my Sisters |
| Open Photographer of the Year | Elle Leontiev | The Barefoot Volcanologist |
| Student Photographer of the Year | Jubair Ahmed Arnob | Overall Student winner |
| Youth Photographer of the Year | Philip Kangas | Overall Youth winner |
| Outstanding Contribution to Photography | Joel Meyerowitz | Recognition for his contribution to photography |
Sony’s April 16 announcement gives the overall winners and describes the awards-wide submission total.
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Why Fabián’s winning project stands out
Fabián is a visual artist from the Yalalteca Indigenous community in Mexico and is based in London. Her work explores identity and its connections to territory, migration and community bonds. In Bilha, Stories of my Sisters, carefully made portraits are combined with digital illustrations in a project created with Indigenous women in southern Mexico. The World Photography Organisation says the project is intended to be published as a children’s book.
#1 Best Overall
The award’s Professional competition recognizes bodies of work, so Fabián’s win honours a sustained project rather than one isolated photograph. Professional jury chair Monica Allende, an independent curator and photography consultant, said: “Across the many series we judged, I was deeply struck by the celebration of the human experience, and of love, kindness, and quiet resilience woven into complex and often challenging realities.” The quotation is from the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 Professional competition announcement.
How the competitions differ
The awards include distinct competitions and recognition levels. The Open competition selects individual images; Professional entries are bodies of work. Student and Youth participants have their own overall winners. A category award or shortlist place is not the same as winning an overall competition.
- Professional: Photographers present bodies of work. The 2026 announcement reported 30 finalists and more than 65 shortlisted photographers.
- Open: The competition recognizes single images. Sony described the 2026 Open entries as its strongest images taken in 2025.
- Student and Youth: Each has a separate overall winner, in addition to the Professional and Open competitions.
- Other recognitions: The World Photography Organisation’s gallery also features national and regional awards and other distinctions.
The Open category winners announced in February are therefore not the same as the overall Open Photographer of the Year announced in April. See Sony’s Professional competition announcement and Open competition announcement for the respective results.
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Professional category winners show the range of work
The 10 Professional category winners span documentary projects, portraits, landscapes, wildlife and other subjects. Their places of origin or national affiliations, as identified in the awards results, make the international range concrete.
| Category | Winner | Project | Country or affiliation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture & Design | Joy Saha | Homes of Haor | Bangladesh |
| Creative | Citlali Fabián | Bilha, Stories of My Sisters | Mexico |
| Documentary Projects | Santiago Mesa | Under the Shadow of Coca | Colombia |
| Environment | Isadora Romero | Notes on How to Build a Forest | Ecuador |
| Landscape | Dafna Talmor | Constructed Landscapes | United Kingdom |
| Perspectives | Seungho Kim | Sunny Side Up: A Portrait of the Most Average K-Parenting Today | Republic of Korea |
| Portraiture | Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni | The Faithful | Italy |
| Sport | Todd Antony | Buzkashi | New Zealand |
| Still Life | Vilma Taubo | Talking Without Speaking | Norway |
| Wildlife & Nature | Will Burrard-Lucas | Crossing Point | United Kingdom |
These are category winners within the Professional competition; Fabián was also its overall Photographer of the Year. The complete results are listed by the World Photography Organisation.
Open category winners and the overall Open winner
The 10 Open category winners were recognized for individual images. Leontiev’s overall Open Photographer of the Year title was announced later and is a separate distinction.
| Open category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Architecture | Markus Naarttijärvi |
| Creative | Siavosh Ejlali |
| Landscape | J Fritz Rumpf |
| Lifestyle | Vanta Coda III |
| Motion | Franklin Littlefield |
| Natural World & Wildlife | Klaus Hellmich |
| Object | Robby Ogilvie |
| Portraiture | Elle Leontiev |
| Street Photography | Giulia Pissagroia |
| Travel | Megumi Murakami |
Leontiev, an Australian photographer, won the overall Open title for The Barefoot Volcanologist, a portrait of Phillip, a self-taught volcanologist, on the ash plains of Mount Yasur on Tanna, Vanuatu. The category results appear in Sony’s February Open announcement; the overall winner is included in the April announcement.
Where to see the 2026 exhibition
The 2026 public exhibition at Somerset House in London ran from April 17 to May 4, 2026, so it has ended. Sony described it as featuring more than 300 prints and hundreds of images in digital displays, alongside a presentation dedicated to Joel Meyerowitz. Those details describe the past exhibition; they do not establish a future schedule.
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