Three years ago, we restructured the World Press Photo Contest to reflect a more global perspective. Entries were grouped by region, and regional juries were introduced, ensuring that exceptional news and documentary photography from every corner of the world would be recognized and awarded. This regional structure that is at the core of our contest setup has worked well and will not change.
Yet, we knew that after the three years of using this contest setup there would be a need for evaluation and adjustment. Following thoughtful discussions with photographers, jury members, exhibition partners and others, we're pleased to announce updates to the categories, prizes and regions in the annual World Press Photo Contest.
The biggest change is more winning projects and photographers. We will go from 30 total winners, including honorable mentions, to 42. For the past three years, there has been one winning Single and one winning Story (containing between 4 and 10 photographs) per region. Now there will be three winners in these categories per region. There will also continue to be one Long-Term Project winner per region.
While it's impossible for any contest or exhibition to capture all the important stories from such large regions, having more winners gives the jury more flexibility.
We will encourage the jury to use this opportunity to ensure a diverse selection of styles and topics, including photography that focuses on breaking news, features, sports news, underrepresented human stories, uplifting human stories, environmental and nature stories. Many exhibition visitors have told us they missed the beauty of nature and the drama of sports photography that we had in the previous contest setup. We agree that themes like these are also a part of the world and deserve inclusion.
All of these winners will be treated equally.
We’ve removed honorable mentions. We saw that projects awarded by the jury as honorable mentions had the same high standards and excellence as other winners, so there is no need for a separate distinction.
Additionally, we will no longer have a separate global-level prize for Story of the Year or the Long-Term Project Award.
We will continue the tradition of awarding a World Press Photo of the Year (now with two runners-up). Any photograph, taken in the contest year, from a winning Single, Story, or Long-Term Project will be eligible for this prestigious award. The World Press Photo of the Year award honors a visually creative and skillfully made photograph that documents and represents an important event, moment or issue of 2024.
The additional monetary prize for World Press Photo of the Year will also increase to 10,000 euros. The Photo of the Year winner and both runners up will also receive FUJIFILM GFX cameras and lenses.
We have decided to remove this category from our contest, at least for now. This was our most challenging decision, as we've had remarkable winners in this category over the past three years, making it difficult to let go.
However, it has also been difficult for us, and our exhibition partners, to display many of these projects in a way that does them justice. World Press Photo exhibitions are shown in many different environments - from museums to churches to parks - and it is often not practical to include multimedia elements that are integral to many of these projects.
Additionally, recruiting participants for this category required significant effort each year due to its emerging nature. It also became increasingly difficult and time-consuming to apply our strict image verification standards to many of these projects. As a result, we’ve decided to focus our resources on supporting the other categories, with special attention to increasing entries from countries and regions with historically lower participation.
We still think there is important work going on in this space, and we will continue to engage with, learn from, and showcase it through our programs such as workshops, lectures and special exhibitions.
It became clear that our former Asia region was simply too vast - including billions of people. Therefore, we have adjusted the regions to split Asia into Pacific Asia and Oceania, and West, Central, and South Asia. This will help balance the number of entries across these regions, and make it easier to assemble juries with a deep understanding of the distinct cultural and political contexts within each region.
We are grateful to everyone who has provided input over the past few years. Your feedback has been invaluable, and we will continue to learn and refine the World Press Photo Contest in the years ahead. We hope this year’s changes resonate with you and that you are as excited as we are to see the results.
Photo credit: Maarten Nauw
