The Times has published the winning photographs from the 2026 World Press Photo Awards, the annual photojournalism competition run from Amsterdam since 1955. The package marks the first major UK broadsheet rollout of this year's jury selections and gives British readers a curated window onto roughly two dozen category winners.

It arrives, as these things do, ahead of the foundation's own exhibition tour, which usually opens in Amsterdam and travels to roughly 45 cities in the year that follows. So consider the Times gallery a first-look catalogue, not the final viewing.

The contest awards work in singles and stories. Singles cover spot news, general news, contemporary issues, the environment, nature, portraits, sports, and long-term projects. Stories mirror that list, with a dedicated documentary section.

Selections span six regions — Africa, Asia, Europe, North and Central America, South America, Southeast Asia and Oceania — with Photo of the Year and Story of the Year emerging from that regional field.

The Times' presentation follows its usual format: a curated gallery, captions tying each frame to its photographer, location, and the broader news story it sits inside. That scaffolding matters. A press photograph read alone is one thing; read with a dateline and a caption, it becomes reporting.

What is the World Press Photo Foundation?

An Amsterdam nonprofit, founded by members of the Dutch photojournalists' association in 1955 and incorporated independently in 1973. The foundation runs the annual contest, maintains a digital archive of every winner since the inaugural 1956 exhibition, and tours the selection to roughly 45 cities a year. The flagship show opens at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, then travels.

Jury composition has shifted modestly across the decades — more regional representation since the 2000s — but the selection logic has held: a frame earns its place on narrative, composition, and news value, in roughly that order.

Why does The Times run this every year?

Two reasons, and they're both workmanlike. First, the contest reliably produces images that need explaining, and explaining them is the Times' job. Second, the gallery resets the annual benchmark for editors and photographers in a way no other single publication does.

A year-on-year reading of the package tells working picture desks which stories the jury considered under-covered, which regions the selectors looked hardest at, and which formal moves got rewarded.

The 2026 edition is the second selection shaped under the foundation's 2024-2026 strategy programme, which has expanded regional jury representation and pushed into video and long-form documentary categories.

What's the jury process look like?

Around 30 jurors — picture editors, photographers, curators — convened for several weeks of review, working from a submission pool that runs into the thousands. Category winners are named first; the global prizes are drawn from that shortlist.

The Times' captions do the work of placing each image inside that process: who shot it, where, when, and what it documents. That last point is worth underlining, because the bare frame often doesn't.

What's changed with this publication?

Three things, briefly. The package makes the selection legible without buying the foundation's print catalogue. It supplies the news context the bare frame often doesn't carry. And it sets the year's working benchmark for editors and photographers at the desk.

None of that is new, exactly — but the 2026 edition lands as the foundation's digital archive gets rebuilt, with new interactive features added over the past two cycles.

Where is this heading?

The foundation's digital archive will add this year's selections within weeks of the Times' publication. The touring exhibition will reach more cities and more institutional partners than the 2024 cycle did, on the foundation's published schedule.

The Times' gallery is, in other words, the first mile of a much longer journey for these images — and the rest of the year, for the photographers behind them.