Forty-two photographers, one edited picture of a turbulent year

The World Press Photo Exhibition 2026 opens at the MPB Gallery on Bermondsey Street, London, on 21 August and runs through 30 September, marking the competition's 70th edition. Curated from submissions by 3,747 photographers across 141 countries, the show presents 42 awarded image-makers whose 57,376 entries were narrowed to a single year's defining visual record.

Now in its seventh decade since the foundation was established in 1955, World Press Photo has become the most widely travelled showcase of documentary photography in the world. In 2025, the touring exhibition reached more than four million visitors in over 80 cities, a measure of the appetite for slow, wall-scale image-making in a feed-driven culture.

What stories made the cut for 2026?

The London selection resists any single thesis, instead holding distinct realities in productive tension. Conflict and displacement feature heavily. Saber Nuraldin's photograph for EPA Images captures Palestinians climbing onto an aid truck at the Zikim Crossing on 27 July 2025, during what the Israeli military termed a "tactical suspension" in operations to allow humanitarian flour through.

Saher Alghorra, working for The New York Times, documents Palestinians waiting for a meal at the Al-Mawasi displacement camp near Khan Younis on 21 September 2025, where local charity kitchens served as one of the few remaining food sources. From Sudan, Abdulmonam Eassa's image for Le Monde shows Alhaja Abdallah, displaced from Bara, displaying scars from a fire set at the Al-Mohad camp by paramilitary forces on 10 December 2025.

The exhibition's quieter rooms are no less urgent. Ihsaan Haffejee's portrait for GroundUp follows young dancers from the Joburg Ballet School backstage at Soweto Theatre on 7 December 2025. In Linköping, Sweden, Sanna Sjöswärd's image for Corren frames Engla Louise performing her daily "bed ballet" on 22 December 2025, her connection to dance sustained through an iPad screen.

Environmental and ethnographic work runs throughout. Roie Galitz photographed a female polar bear feeding on a sperm whale carcass in the pack ice north of Svalbard on 8 July 2025. Matthew Abbott, working for Oculi and The New York Times, recorded a young man dragging a dolphin ashore at Walande, Maramasike Island, on 11 February 2025, as the Fanalei community's sister village shared a catch across the Surodo Lagoon.

Brais Lorenzo's coverage for EFE, Revista 5W, and El País captures the Larouco wildfire, the worst in Galicia's recorded history, burning through the Sierra de O Courel on 19 August 2025. Alex Kent, for The New York Times, photographed Barnard College alumna Jesse Pearce being arrested outside Columbia University's commencement ceremony on 21 May 2025, where alumni joined students protesting the institution's financial ties to Israel.

Why does the travelling exhibition still matter?

For London Exhibition Director Woody Anderson, the project rests on returning visitors as much as first-timers.

"It's an honour to bring the World Press Photo Exhibition back to the UK once again," he says. "Seeing it grow with every year highlights just how important these stories are in the times we're living in."

Global jury chair Kira Pollack frames the work in explicitly civic terms. "At a time when truth feels increasingly fragile and contested, visual journalism stands as one of our most powerful tools for bearing witness and creating understanding," she says. "Photography has a unique ability to transcend language and borders, to shift perspectives, and to move policymakers and public alike toward action."

That ethos shapes the show's sequencing. A photograph from a Thai-Myanmar border shelter, where Jes Aznar for The New York Times documented stranded workers unable to cross the Moei River on 5 December 2025, sits near William Keo's image of Mehdi, originally from the Montfermeil Bosquets housing project, fighting in a CanalPourss boxing initiative in Marseille on 27 July 2024.

What is the institutional context of the 2026 show?

MPB, the used equipment platform, returns as London partner for a third consecutive year, a sponsorship arrangement its chief marketing officer Sophie Collins links directly to access. "Supporting the World Press Photo Exhibition reflects our commitment to championing visual storytelling and making photography more accessible to everyone," Collins says.

The Bermondsey venue itself is new to the exhibition's circuit, and the foundation's choice of a gallery whose parent company trades in cameras places the contest in conversation with the broader photographic economy. Whether that relationship matures into curatorial collaboration or remains chiefly commercial will be clearer when the foundation announces its 2027 partner venues later this year.