Help and FAQ

No. Once you have selected to ‘submit’ your images into a specified category, you will not be able to change it. 

Yes. You may enter into other photography competitions, we have no exclusivity rights to your images.

Images can be manipulated, however the manipulation must be clearly outlined within the image description.

No. All images must be submitted online, via the website.

Yes they can. These images should still be no smaller than 1MB in order to enter them, and a higher resolution version may still be required.

Entries in any Sony World Photography Awards 2026 competition must have been taken between:

1 January to 28 Nov 2025 for the Student competition.

1 January 2025 to 6 January 2026 for the Open and Youth competitions.

For the Professional competiton, published work may have been taken at any point in history, but must have been published between the dates of January 1, 2025 and January 13, 2026. Up to 20% of work can be published on your personal website and social media i.e. two images can be published on personal platforms if submitting a series of 8-10 images. One image can be published if submitting a series of 5-7 images. 

Un-published work entered into the competition may have been taken at any point in history but never been shown publicly. Once unpublished work has been entered, it cannot be entered again as published work in the future year of the Awards’ competition.

All entrants understand that any image submitted to the competition may be used by Sony World Photography Awards, for the sole purpose of promoting the competition and the photographers themselves.

Please read the full list of rules for the Open and Professional competitions for details.

Shortlisted winners will be individually notified by email prior to the Sony World Photography Awards ceremony. The winners will all be announced at the ceremony.

We would be delighted to hear from you! Please do not hesitate to drop us a message and we will be in touch as soon as possible.

All images should be submitted online through the Competitions section of the World Photography Organisation  website.

In the Professional competition, you can enter a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 10 images per category. You may enter as many categories as you wish.

In the Open and Youth competitions, you can enter up to 3 images in total for free. These images may be entered across any of the categories. You may enter more images by buying our bundles. There are two image bundles available: the 10 images bundle, 20 Image bundle and the 50 images bundle (You will need to be a registered user in order to access the bundle page)

The Sony World Photography Awards are FREE to enter.

Please ensure that your images are above 1MB size and are in Jpeg format.

It may be that your images are too large for the local Internet connection and we suggest that you resize all the pictures and try again.

If you continue to have problems, please do not hesitate to contact us.

These will need to be scanned into a digital file and then uploaded online via the website. Please state in the image description that the images have been scanned from negatives.

Yes, we respect the integrity of the photographers and therefore judging is anonymous.  Judges will not know the names of any of the entrants.

No. All images must be clear of any copyright information so that the photographers identity is not revealed by the image.  In the interest of fairness, the judges are not allowed to see the names of the photographers when judging. Any images that do contain photographers names on the image or any other watermark/copyright information will be disqualified from being presented to the judges.

Images should be no smaller than 1MB and no larger than 5MB. Images should be either JPEG or TIFF files.

All images must be saved in the sRGB colour model.

All entrants must be able to supply a high resolution image suitable for printing in exhibitions and marketing materials should the image be required.

The deadline for the various competitions are avaialble on the respective pages:

Professional competition, Open competition, Youth competition, Student competition

Yes, your university must be registered. You can register on behalf of your university during the entry process.

A series of five(5) to ten(10) images.

Digital manipulation is allowed, however you must provide details of how your image has been altered.

You must be aged 18-30.

Your institution should be teaching higher education photography – a minimum of one module/course in photography as part of a degree course or similar.  Students entering the competition should be studying an element/module of photography. 

The competition is for all students studying an element of photography within a higher education course.

Please visit the competition page here for all the key dates.

Please visit the competition page here for all the key dates.

You can find more about the judges here