61st Edition of Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The 61st edition of Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the prestigious exhibition promoted by the Natural History Museum, London, will be on view at Fort Bard from 21 March to 12 July 2026, showcasing some of the most outstanding wildlife photographs taken around the world today. The exhibition brings together powerful and compelling images that reveal rarely seen animal behaviour, extraordinary species and a wide range of natural environments. Through the unique emotional power of photography, the selected works tell stories from across the world and inspire a deeper commitment to protecting our planet.

This year’s competition attracted more than 60,000 entries from photographers of all ages and levels of experience, representing 113 countries. All submissions were judged anonymously by an international panel of industry experts, who assessed each image for creativity, originality and technical excellence. The overall winner of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 is Ghost Town Visitor by South African photographer Wim van den Heever. The haunting image captures a brown hyena moving among the skeletal remains of the abandoned diamond mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia. To create this extraordinary photograph using camera-trap technology, the photographer waited a decade after first noticing signs of the animal’s presence. The title of Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 has been awarded to Andrea Dominizi, the first Italian ever to receive the prestigious prize for nature photographers aged 17 and under. His photograph, After the Destruction, tells a poignant story of habitat loss, portraying a longhorn beetle (Cerambycidae) in a deforested area of the Lepini Mountains in central Italy.