British Photography Awards 2026: A Fungus Cloud, a Free Diver and Four Dachshunds Take the Prizes

The British Photography Awards named its 2026 winners last night at a ceremony at the Royal Lancaster in London, handing out category prizes and People's Choice Awards to photographers based across the UK. The competition is open to every photographer working in Britain, and this year's honours list runs from a Budweiser World Cup commission to a puffball fungus caught mid-explosion.

Here is what won, and who made it.

Who took the category prizes?

The Documentary category went to Brad Wakefield, for his photograph of Dan Hawkes, a harvest manager at the Cornish Seaweed Company, free diving off the coast of Coverack in Cornwall to sustainably cut sea spaghetti. It's working life rendered without sentimentality — a man, cold water and a livelihood.

Claire Waring took the Macro prize with a picture that rewards patience: a puffball fungus (Basidiomycota) at the end of its life, releasing a spherical fruiting body that, when mature, bursts on impact into a cloud of thousands of spores carried off on air currents. Waring triggered two flashguns from the shutter release to freeze the spores mid-air. Technique, in this case, is the picture.

The other category winners:

• Event: Aggie Anthimidou, for a live shot of Yungblud in Bergamo, Italy, capturing the chaotic stage energy that defines his shows.
• Drone: Marc Lock, for an aerial view of Stwlan Dam, North Wales.
• Fashion: Hannah Couzens.
• Wedding: David Bostock, for a couple at Cliveden House.
• Land Animal: Deborah Russell, for a bear in Alaska with what was left of his fish dinner.
• Commercial: Product: Jonathan Knowles, for a project for Budweiser and Budweiser 0.0 celebrating their sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup 2026.
• Low Light: Josh Dury, for sunflowers beneath the Milky Way galaxy in Dorset.
• Self Portrait: Rachel Green.
• Street: Nicky Johnston, for a photograph captured in Liverpool.
• Pets and Domesticated: Andrew Raven, for four dachshunds dressed as King's Guards on The Mall, framed by Union flags with Buckingham Palace in the distance.
• Sports: Ethan Fraser, taken during King of Kings, an annual weekend event at Kings Skatepark in Boscombe.

What did the public choose?

The People's Choice Awards, voted separately from the jury prizes, went to:

• Landscape: Thomas Harper, for a wave breaking on Portucano Beach.
• Event: Mat Price, shot in Iceland.
• Water Life: Rhiannon Lawler, for a polar bear balancing on the edge of a drifting iceberg in East Greenland — the photographer noted the bear was continuing the watchful hunting behaviour she had observed earlier on land, scanning the horizon and testing the air for scent.
• Low Light: David Miller, for an ultrarunner climbing through the night during The Hill Ultra on The Wrekin, Shropshire.
• Street: Olly Headey, shot in New York City.

Does the spread tell us anything?

Fourteen category winners plus five audience picks is a lot of ground: Bergamo to Boscombe, Cornwall to East Greenland, in a single awards list. That breadth is the point of the competition — it treats a commercial Budweiser product shot and a documentary free-dive on equal footing with a prize-winning fungus.

The jury's taste leans towards motion caught at the right instant: spores detonating, a wave breaking, a runner mid-climb, a frontman mid-frenzy. The public's vote, tellingly, went to the polar bear and the iceberg. Audiences still love a threatened icon.

The full winner lists and details of next year's competition are on the British Photography Awards' website. Expect the puffball to do the rounds.