World Press Photo names 42 regional winners, including a Spanish photographer

Photojournalism awards can feel abstract — a lot of grand language, a lot of images pulled out of context. But the World Press Photo winners are useful because they show what editors and juries think the year actually looked like. This year’s 42 regional winners sketch a pretty clear picture: war, climate damage, migration, protest, and everyday survival. And the Spanish angle is real — three Spanish photographers made the cut in different regions and categories. ### What exactly was announced? World Press Photo named the 42 winning projects in its 2026 contest, drawn from 57,376 photographs submitted by 3,747 photographers across 141 countries. These are regional winners, not one single global shortlist in the old sense — the contest now works through six regions and three main categories: Singles, Stories, and Long-Term Projects. (worldpressphoto.org) ### Why does “regional winners” matter? Because the structure tells you what kind of work gets rewarded. World Press Photo shifted to a regional model in 2021, and the idea is basically to stop treating the world like one giant assignment desk run from a few capitals. In 2026, 31 of the 42 winners were local to the region they photographed. That is a big signal — proximity and lived knowledge counted for a lot. (worldpressphoto.org) ### Which Spanish photographers won? Three of them. Brais Lorenzo won in Europe, in the Stories category, for *Tierra quemada* — a report on Galicia’s wildfires. Luis Tato won in Africa, also in Stories, for his coverage of Madagascar’s Gen Z protests. Diego Ibarra Sánchez won in West, Central and South Asia, in Long-Term Projects, for *Una educación secuestrada*, about how war wrecks children’s access to schooling across multiple countries. (worldpressphoto.org) ### What made those projects stand out? They’re not just dramatic pictures. They’re stories with structure. Lorenzo’s work ties wildfire imagery to climate stress and rural depopulation in Galicia. Tato’s project captures youth-led protest in Madagascar as a political force, not just street chaos. Ibarra Sánchez goes broader and slower — his project follows how conflict hollows out education, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine and beyond. (nationalgeographic.com.es) ### What does the full winners list say about 2025? It says the jury saw the year as fractured but connected. The official contest framing keeps returning to the same cluster of themes: the overreach of power, the climate crisis, conflict, displacement, resistance, rebuilding. That sounds lofty, but the winners list backs it up — from Sudan’s war to Gaza, from wildfires to protest movements, the pattern is consistent. (nationalgeographic.com.es) ### Did this also lead to a top overall winner? Yes. After the 42 regional winners were announced, World Press Photo named Carol Guzy’s *Separated by ICE* as the 2026 Photo of the Year on April 23. The image shows a family split apart after an immigration court hearing in New York. Two finalists focused on Gaza and on survivors of sexual violence in Guatemala. So the contest’s final message got even sharper — state power and human vulnerability were at the center. (worldpressphoto.org) ### So what’s the real takeaway? The interesting shift is not just that Spanish photographers won. It’s that the contest keeps moving toward insider reporting — photographers documenting their own regions, often their own crises. That doesn’t make the work less global. Turns out it makes it more legible, more specific, and harder to dismiss as parachute journalism. (worldpressphoto.org) ### Bottom line World Press Photo’s 2026 winners are a snapshot of what visual journalism values right now — closeness, context, and evidence. The Spanish winners fit that pattern exactly. They didn’t win by bringing distant spectacle home. They won by showing how big global pressures look on the ground. (worldpressphoto.org 1) (worldpressphoto.org 2)