World Press Photo 2026 brings 150 award-winning images to Vienna

About 150 award-winning images from World Press Photo 2026 go on display at Westlicht, a photography museum in Vienna, on Friday, ORF reports. The exhibition comes as unmanipulated press photographs have gained added importance amid the flood of AI-generated images.

The World Press Photo of the Year was taken by Carol Guzy, a four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer. It shows the two daughters of an Ecuadorian man clinging desperately to him after his arrest by ICE agents, conveying a climate of fear and uncertainty linked to tougher US immigration policies.

The jury selected the winning images from about 75,000 submissions, said Martha Echevarria, a curator at the independent, nonprofit World Press Photo Foundation. The judges assessed the strength of each photograph and the story it told. A research team and a forensics team checked the images for authenticity.

The exhibition covers six regions of the world and documents protests, the consequences of conflicts and how people find ways to move on afterwards, Echevarria said. Other themes include climate change and the environment.

The selected photographs include a man crying as his building complex burns in Hong Kong, where 168 people died in the fire, and the story of former dancer Engla Louise, who has anorexia nervosa and receives palliative care. Other images show a female polar bear feeding on a sperm whale carcass, girls attending classes at an informal open-air school in eastern Afghanistan and young ballet dancers in South Africa. During apartheid, ballet was reserved for the white population.

Another award-winning series by photojournalist Chantal Pinzi follows female horse riders in Morocco who are taking part in Tbourida, a tradition reserved exclusively for men for centuries.

Pinzi said the work required intensive preparation, including studying details that were important to the photographs. She began speaking with the women months before the shoot, building relationships before visiting them.

Her projects focus on women claiming spaces from which they were excluded. She said she wanted to strengthen communities and have a positive influence on society rather than simply take photographs and leave.

World Press Photo is being shown at Westlicht for the 25th time, matching the museum’s 25-year history. Founder Peter Coeln said the exhibition had become increasingly important in an era of fake news. The museum expects to bring about 200 school classes through the show.

Alongside the main exhibition, Westlicht is showing part of a long-term series about Roma by Serbian-Austrian photographer Masha Stanic.

World Press Photo 2026 and Call it Dubai run at Westlicht, Westbahnstrasse 40 in Vienna’s seventh district, from September 11 to November 22. The museum is open daily from 11am to 7pm and until 9pm on Thursdays.