Daniel Viñé Garcia Takes Top Honor at 17th Epson Pano Awards

The 17th Epson International Pano Awards has named Spanish photographer Daniel Viñé Garcia its Open Photographer of the Year for 2026. The announcement came on October 20, 2026, and it closes another edition of one of the longest-running competitions devoted entirely to panoramic photography.

The award matters because of its focus. Most photography prizes accept any format. This one does not. It exists to reward work made across an extreme horizontal frame, a shape that changes how photographers compose, wait, and edit.

Who won, and what does the title mean?

Viñé Garcia takes the competition's principal open-category honor. The Open Photographer of the Year title is the top award available to entrants outside the amateur division, and it places the Spanish photographer at the head of the 2026 field.

The winning imagery announced with the results includes panoramic wildlife work. One widely circulated frame from the awards shows four rhinoceroses walking in a line across a grassy plain under a cloudy sky, with two white birds flying nearby. The picture shows why the panoramic format suits animal behavior on open ground: the wide frame holds the whole group and the sky above it in a single view.

That is the mechanism of the format. A standard frame crops context. A panorama keeps the herd, the horizon, and the weather together, and the photographer's craft lies in waiting for the moment when all those elements align. The takeaway is simple: the format rewards patience as much as lenses.

What is the Epson International Pano Awards?

The competition, sponsored by Epson, has now run for seventeen editions. It is dedicated to panoramic photography, a discipline with roots in nineteenth-century survey practice that digital stitching later made far more flexible.

The awards publish a selection of winning and commended images after each announcement, and the 2026 results follow that pattern. The organizers highlighted ten winning entries in this year's announcement, spanning the open and related categories. In short: this is a specialist prize, and it keeps a specialist tradition alive.

Where does panoramic photography stand in 2026?

Panoramic imaging sits in an odd institutional position. Museums rarely build exhibitions around it as a category. Yet the format persists because certain subjects — plains, herds, seascapes, mountain ranges — genuinely need the extra width. Competitions like this one remain the main stage where that work gets judged and seen.

A win here also carries practical weight for a working photographer. The Open Photographer of the Year title typically brings prize equipment and, more importantly, visibility in the awards' published showcases, which reach a large international audience of photographers and editors each October.

The 2026 edition suggests the panoramic tradition is holding its audience. Wildlife work of the kind honored this year shows the format still doing something a standard frame cannot.

The awards will return for an eighteenth edition, and Viñé Garcia's win sets the standard the next cohort of panoramic photographers will have to meet.