From the parched riverbeds of the Amazon to the devastated neighborhoods of Gaza, the 2025 World Press Photo Contest once again brings into focus the defining moments of a turbulent year. Today, the organization revealed the regional winners of this year’s competition—an evocative collection of 42 projects that span continents, cultures, and crises. The ultimate prize, World Press Photo of the Year, along with two top finalists, will be unveiled on April 17 during the opening ceremony at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.
In a significant change from previous editions, this year’s contest celebrates nine more winners than in past years, in honor of World Press Photo’s 70th anniversary. A gesture that not only marks a milestone but opens the stage to a wider array of voices and stories.

The selected images reflect an unflinching gaze into the world as it stood in 2024—a year marked by political unrest, environmental disasters, rising authoritarianism, and ongoing humanitarian crises. From street protests in Kenya and Georgia, to intimate portraits of power and survival in Germany, the United States, and Ukraine, the awarded works do not just document events—they immerse the viewer in the lived reality behind the headlines.
“The world is not the same as it was when World Press Photo was founded in 1955,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, Executive Director of World Press Photo. “We live in an age where it’s easier than ever to look away, to scroll past, to disengage. But these images don’t allow that. They cut through the noise, and force us to confront what’s happening—even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it challenges our place in the world.”

2025 Highlights

Among the most striking images selected this year:

• Musuk Nolte’s haunting photo of a young man carrying food across the cracked, sunbaked bed of the Solimões River in Brazil—a once navigable waterway, now dry due to climate collapse.
• Ali Jadallah’s powerful scene from Gaza, where residents cautiously return to the ruins of Khan Yunis after Israeli forces pull back, their homes now reduced to rubble.
• Amanda M. Perobelli captures the aftermath of Brazil’s worst floods in history, where over 600,000 people were displaced and more than 180 lost their lives.
• A moment frozen in time by Jabin Botsford, showing Donald Trump being rushed offstage by Secret Service agents after an attempted assassination during a rally in Pennsylvania—his ear bloodied, the crowd stunned.
• Rafael Heygster delivers an unnerving close-up of the eyes of Alice Weidel, far-right German politician, a stark visual metaphor for the resurgence of extremist rhetoric in Europe.
• Florian Bachmeier’s quiet, emotional portrait of Anhelina, a 6-year-old Ukrainian girl coping with PTSD after fleeing Kupiansk, lies curled up in bed in a stranger’s home.
• Jerome Brouillet’s dynamic image of surfer Gabriel Medina seemingly suspended mid-air during the Paris 2024 Olympics, which has since gone viral with over 9.5 million likes on Instagram.
• In Cinzia Canneri’s devastating portrait, a 23-year-old Eritrean woman reveals the scar left by an Amhara soldier’s bullet—her body, like too many others, turned into a battlefield.
• Marijn Fidder introduces us to Tamale Safalu, a Ugandan bodybuilder who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident in 2020 and now trains to compete alongside able-bodied athletes.
• And Luis Tato captures the pink-stained face of a protester in Kenya, marked by a police water cannon mixed with dye—used to tag and later identify demonstrators.

This year’s World Press Photo winners do more than record—they resonate. Each image compels us to pause and witness, to reflect not only on what has happened but on what continues to unfold. The 2025 contest reminds us why photojournalism remains an essential act of resistance and remembrance.
The full exhibition will tour globally after its premiere in Amsterdam, offering audiences around the world a chance to engage with these powerful visual narratives.

(cover picture by Cinzia Canneri)

More info:

www.worldpressphoto.org