Sony World Photography Awards 2025: open competition winners announced

With over 419,000 submissions from more than 200 nations and territories, the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 highlights extraordinary moments through the lens of talented photographers worldwide.

The ten category winners range from breathtaking landscapes to powerful portraiture, showcasing photography’s ability to tell compelling stories in a single frame.

Among the standout entries, Xuecheng Liu triumphed in the Architecture category with a dramatic aerial perspective of New York’s Times Square (see header image above), while Jonell Francisco won in Creative for an elegant collage-style portrait influenced by Renaissance art.

Other winners include Ng Guang Ze for a mesmerising landscape, Olivier Unia for an action-packed motion shot, and Estebane Rezkallah for a striking wildlife image of polar bears feeding on a whale carcass in Greenland.

The Open Photographer of the Year, set to receive a $5,000 prize and Sony imaging gear, will be revealed at a gala event in London on 16 April. The winning and shortlisted works will be displayed at Somerset House from 17 April to 5 May 2025 before embarking on an international tour.

For the complete list of winners and shortlisted photographers, visit worldphoto.org.