The Sony World Photography Awards announces the 10 category winners and shortlists of the 2025 Open competition, recognising the best single images of 2024

  Ahmed Bin Abdulqader

The Sony World Photography Awards reveals today

the 10 category winners and shortlisted photographers in the 2025 Open competition. Now in

its 18th year, the Open competition celebrates the ability of an individual photograph to

capture and distil a singular moment, and to evoke a broader narrative. Entrants were

invited to submit their strongest single images from 2024, and the winners and shortlists

represent some of the most arresting photography from the past year.

Across this year’s competitions, over 419,000 images from over 200 countries and territories

were submitted to the Awards.

The Open Photographer of the Year will be announced at the Awards’ ceremony in London

on 16 April and will receive a $5,000 (USD) cash prize and a range of Sony digital imaging

equipment. Selected winning and shortlisted images will be shown as part of the Sony World

Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House from 17 April – 5 May 2025, and will then

travel to other locations.

This year’s Open category winners are:

ARCHITECTURE

Xuecheng Liu (China Mainland) for the photograph Center of the Cosmos, which shows

New York’s iconic Times Square from above, using a very wide angle to highlight the expanse

of the city.

CREATIVE

Jonell Francisco (Philippines) for Kem the Unstoppable, an elegantly photographed collage

portrait, alluding to Renaissance traditions of portraiture.

LANDSCAPE

Ng Guang Ze (Singapore) for his mesmerising black-and-white shot of a stream

meandering through grasslands into a lake in the distance, taken in Wenhai, Lijiang.

LIFESTYLE

Hajime Hirano (Japan) for his meticulously composed image of a street vendor selling

electronic parts in Akihabara, once Japan’s largest electronics town following a period of

rapid economic growth in the late 1950s.

MOTION

Olivier Unia (France) for Tbourida La Chute, in which the photographer captures the danger

and excitement of the moment a rider is thrown from their mount during a ‘tbourida,’ a

traditional Moroccan equestrian performance.

NATURAL WORLD & WILDLIFE

Estebane Rezkallah (France) for The Whale Raft, depicting a group of polar bears feasting

on the carcass of a whale in east Greenland.

OBJECT

Sussi Charlotte Alminde (Denmark) for Octopuses in the Sky, showcasing elaborate

handmade kites at the Fanø International Kite Fliers Meeting, one of the world’s largest kite

flying events.

PORTRAITURE

Yeintze Boutamba (Gabon) for Encounter, a tender portrait of two people shot in the

intimacy of a bedroom. The photographer wanted to immortalise this moment for the

sitters.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Khairizal Maris (Indonesia) for Celebrating Football Club Victories, which pictures the elation

of fans celebrating a win by their local football club by lighting flares in Bandung, West Java.

TRAVEL

Matjaž Šimic (Slovenia) for Ask a Shaman, depicting a group of shamans in La Paz, Bolivia,

where they play a major role in Native Bolivian traditional culture, shot against the brightly

painted local architecture.

This year’s Open competition was judged by Claudia Grimaldi Marks, Senior Manager, New

Creator Strategy at Getty Images.

The overall winners in the Student, Youth, Open and Professional competitions of the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 will be announced on 16 April 2025.

For more

 worldphoto.org