World Press Photo will add Nature and Sports categories to its 2027 contest. The Amsterdam-based organization announced the two new awards through a brief notice carried on The Eye of Photography.

What is being added?

The 2027 cycle will recognize Nature and Sports as distinct award categories. These join the existing structure of news, documentary, portraiture, and long-term project prizes. The new categories mark the first major expansion of named sections in the contest's recent history.

The foundation has not yet released jury details, submission deadlines, or prize values, leaving working photographers and photo editors without the operational information they need to plan submissions. The contest typically operates on an annual calendar. Call-for-entries opens in autumn. Winners are named in spring. The associated exhibitions tour global cities from spring through autumn. Editors expect the 2027 timeline to follow that pattern.

Why does the addition matter?

Nature and sports photography operate as distinct editorial worlds. Nature work sits across conservation, science, climate, and wildlife beats. Sports photography draws on action, portraiture, and access inside professional leagues and amateur events.

Nature photographers build careers around long-form environmental stories. Sports photographers work under tight access rules and fast turnaround cycles. Both fields require specific technical and editorial skills that differ from breaking news work.

The foundation has historically placed stories from those worlds under news and documentary umbrellas. The boundary has grown harder to defend as climate stories anchor daily news and sports photography professionalizes into its own industry with dedicated agencies. The new categories reflect that shift.

What is the institutional context?

World Press Photo was founded in 1955 in the Netherlands. The foundation grew out of Dutch press culture after the Second World War. It runs the annual contest that bears its name. It also runs a year-round education program for photographers in regions with limited media training.

The foundation operates as a registered Dutch nonprofit. A board oversees governance. An executive director leads staff operations. The annual jury draws on working photographers, editors, and curators from multiple continents. That jury structure has remained largely consistent across decades of the contest's modern era.

The contest's top prize is the World Press Photo of the Year. Past winners have included images from conflicts, protests, environmental disasters, and intimate portraiture. The shortlist carries weight across newsrooms and picture desks worldwide. Editors use the annual results to benchmark the strongest editorial work of the previous year.

How does this fit the broader field?

The expansion positions the foundation against specialized competitions in nature and sports photography. Editors and photographers will weigh whether the new awards can match the prestige of established categories. The contest now competes for entries that might otherwise go elsewhere. Specialized competitions in those fields have grown steadily over the past decade.

Adding categories also signals an editorial ambition beyond photojournalism in its strict sense. The new awards may give nature and sports work a clearer home within the contest structure. That move could draw photographers who previously submitted elsewhere.

The 2027 cycle will show whether the new awards attract serious entries. The foundation's next announcement will likely carry jury details and submission timelines that working photographers need in order to plan their 2027 contest entries. Photographers, editors, and curators will track that release closely.