World Press Photo 2025 brings the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, migration and political polarization to the forefront of this year's touring exhibition, which presents the winning images from the annual contest's most recent edition.

The four subjects named by the exhibition's organizers frame the selection as a whole. Visitors moving through the show will encounter images made in two active theaters of war, alongside work documenting migration and the deepening political divides that shaped a year of elections and unrest across much of the world.

What does the 2025 selection show?

Gaza and Ukraine dominate the conflict coverage. Photographers working in both regions produced some of the year's most circulated press images, and the exhibition places that work before audiences far from the events themselves. The show functions, as World Press Photo exhibitions long have, as the broadest public venue for conflict photography — a form that reaches millions of viewers through newspapers and screens but rarely hangs at this scale on gallery walls.

Migration appears as a third thread. The theme has run through World Press Photo selections for more than a decade, from Mediterranean crossings to border enforcement on several continents, and the 2025 edition continues that institutional commitment to a subject that news cycles treat episodically but photographers follow over years.

Political polarization, the fourth announced theme, marks the selection's engagement with the turbulent politics of the contest year: campaigns, protests and the visual rhetoric of division.

Why does the exhibition matter?

World Press Photo, founded in 1955 and based in Amsterdam, runs the world's most prominent competition for photojournalism. Its annual exhibition travels to dozens of cities and typically attracts large audiences, giving press photographers a museum-scale platform that few other institutions provide.

The choice of themes tells its own story. That Gaza, Ukraine, migration and polarization sit together in one exhibition is a summary of the year in news: war on two fronts, movement of peoples, and democracies under strain. The exhibition does not separate these threads; it lets them sit side by side, and the cumulative effect is a portrait of a world defined by conflict and division.

For photographers, inclusion in the selection remains one of the profession's highest recognitions, and the touring show extends the life of images that first appeared in fast-moving news contexts into slower, more contemplative viewing conditions.

The 2025 exhibition continues to tour, bringing its account of a turbulent year to audiences across multiple countries in the months ahead.