Pictured: Winning entries for Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026

Black-and-white photograph of an adult elephant lifting the body of a dead elephant calf with its trunk. The calf is hanging limp in the air, with its legs and head lowered. The adult elephant stands beside it in an outdoor setting with a blurred background.
Maddie Molloy & Alex Brian

An emotional scene of an elephant carrying a deceased calf has earned Italian photographer Federico Veronesi the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026.

While tracking elephants in Namibia's Huab River Valley, Veronesi spotted an unusual trail of drag marks across the sand of a dry riverbed.

Following the tracks, he came across a female elephant carrying a dead calf, its leg wedged between her tusk and trunk.

Initially, Veronesi assumed the elephant was the calf's mother. But after sharing his photographs with an elephant research project working in the area, he learned that this wasn't certain.

Researchers recognised the elephant as a female who had lost a calf several years earlier and said she had previously picked up dead calves belonging to other females.

For Veronesi, the encounter was deeply significant. "Of all the 20 years I've done photographing animals, this is the most heart-wrecking and fascinating and dramatic," he said, describing it as "revealing of the depth and complexity of the emotions, the feelings of the animals."

He hopes the image will encourage people to look beyond animals' physical appearance and recognise them as individuals with their own relationships, memories and emotions. "It's a small window that opens just a crack into the complexity of their world," he said.

The competition's annual exhibition opens at the Natural History Museum on Friday 16 October 2026. Keep scrolling to see more award-winning images.

Labour of love

A dung beetle pushes a ball of dung over twice its size along a dusty surface. Tiny flies cover its back and hover behind it, in this high-contrast, monochrome image.

Category: Young Grand Title and 11 to 14 Years

Location: Zambezi National Park, Zimbabwe

Only by lying in the dust and capturing the beetle at eye level could Whitfield show how much strength its task required.

While on a family game drive in Zimbabwe, near his home in Victoria Falls, he spotted the dung beetle struggling to push a ball of dung uphill through the sand, with a trail of flies following closely behind. After experimenting with different angles and compositions, he captured a moment that reveals the extraordinary effort involved in this seemingly simple task.

"I hope that when people look at the photograph, they can see too, and maybe appreciate how much can be happening in a small moment in the natural world," says Whitfield.

Flight of the Bumblebee

A large bumblebee spreads its wings beside three flowers. The plants have thick, green stems, with red buds lower down and thin, white flowers protruding from all angles at the top. Dense green foliage fills the background.

You do not need a camera or a plane ticket to take an award-winning photo. Davis captured this shot in the garden using her dad's smartphone.

The image freezes in time a single wingbeat from a common carder bumblebee as it prepares to land on a flower.

An elephant sprays water from a shallow waterhole at a group of zebras. The black-and-white image also features several giraffes, with one standing in front of the zebras to the right of the elephant.

Category: Animals in their Environment

Location: Chyulu Hills National Park, Kenya

Lewin captured this dreamy, black-and-white photo of a young bull elephant spraying zebras at a waterhole.

He softened the usually harsh light by using a camera converted to infrared.

A Watchful Eye

One eye of an octopus and a patch of its cracked, red skin are visible from behind a large flap of kelp. Imprints from the animal’s suckers cover the yellow-green seaweed.

Common octopuses are usually found in the warmer Mediterranean Sea. But with global warming pushing up springtime sea temperatures, sightings across south-west England have massively increased.

Sanders described the moment he spotted a single eye peeking from behind the kelp: "We remained perfectly still, watching one another with a seemingly shared curiosity."

Scenes from the Swamp

Two shoebill storks – large birds with light-grey feathers and long, ducklike beaks – carry leaves and grass in their mouths as they cross a swamp full of different grasses and small, purple flowers. One has its wings outstretched.

Photographer: Isak Pretorius, South Africa

Fewer than 5,300 mature shoebill storks are estimated to remain in the wild. Yet Pretorius, while canoeing with a guide, was able to capture these two – likely a breeding pair collecting material for their nest.

Despite their name, shoebill storks are actually more closely related to pelicans, herons and ibises.

A blackbird opens its beak while perched on a long, thin branch that divides the frame diagonally. Other branches with small, green leaves point upwards, surrounded by a blurred mixture of greens and blues, with touches of white, pink, and yellow.

Spring sees male blackbirds search for high vantage points to sing and try to attract a mate.

This photo was taken in a vineyard at dawn, when the birds sing their most complex compositions.

A large common water monitor lizard lies on the ground beside a lake, gripping a large fish in its mouth. Trees, water and tall city buildings are visible in the background.

Location: Lumphini Park, Bangkok, Thailand

Forestson lowered himself onto the mud to capture this common water lizard against the city skyline.

A dark Abbott's moray eel is photographed against a black background, with its long curved body and spotted skin clearly visible. Its mouth is slightly open and its body is positioned as if swimming through the water.

Location: Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyūshū, Japan

This is probably the first time the courtship ritual of Abbott's moray eels has been photographed, the NHM said.

Wu worked with biologists and used dim red light and a customised fisheye lens to minimise disturbance.

Wily Coyotes of San Francisco

A coyote walks along a narrow dirt trail through grass and low vegetation in Bernal Heights Park, with San Francisco and the bay visible in the background. The animal is shown in profile, moving across the landscape, with the distant urban skyline contrasting with its wild surroundings.

San Francisco is estimated to be home to around 100 coyotes, living alongside a large human population. While they can prey on domestic animals, they also help control disease-carrying rodents, and residents' attitudes towards them are mixed.

A California newt is shown underwater, clinging vertically to a plant stem in murky, yellow-brown water. Its body and spotted skin are clearly visible as it holds onto vegetation containing eggs.

Location: Contra Costa County, California, USA

Sorokin dipped his camera and lights in a murky pond to catch this glimpse of a California newt laying her eggs.

A pale scorpion is partially buried in dark sand, with its curved tail raised above the ground. Loose sand surrounds it as it appears to burrow into a dune against a black background.

Location: Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India

A scorpion is photographed burrowing into the shifting dunes of India's Thar Desert.

Exploring the dunes at night, Raul saw many scorpions searching for prey but as temperatures rose after sunrise, the scorpion dug into the sand to escape the intense heat.

A whale shark swims beneath a brightly illuminated rectangular fishing platform in almost completely dark water. The platform is surrounded by bright lights, creating a strong contrast with the dark sea around it.

Category: Oceans: The Bigger Picture

Location: Off Cenderawasih Bay, Papua, Indonesia

A whale shark investigates the catch of a mobile net-fishing platform, known as a bagan. Lindbloom searched for sharks around dawn, using the bagan's bright lights to illuminate them when there was too little natural light for his drone.

A group of mushrooms grows from a dark, decaying log in a forest. Under ultraviolet light, their long stems glow bright yellow while their rounded caps appear blue-grey and stand out against the dark woodland background.

Papatsanis used ultrviolet light to illuminate mushrooms known as "beautiful bonnets" growing from a decaying log on the lower slopes of Mount Olympus in Greece.

A robber fly grips a flesh fly while feeding on it at very close range. The two insects fill the frame, revealing their eyes, legs and mouthparts in exceptionally fine detail.

Tinker-Tsavalas uses macro photography to reveal the intricate details of tiny animals that are easily overlooked, particularly in urban habitats. His interest in macro photography developed during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when he was restricted to habitats close to his home in Berlin.

A large flock of small birds appears as blurred golden streaks flying across a dark woodland. Tall, leafless birch trees form a vertical background. The golden birds creates the impression of foliage on the trees.

Michalski used a slow shutter speed to photograph birds flying across a background of leafless birch trees. A field of unharvested sunflowers had attracted mixed flocks of birds, especially goldfinches and bramblings, before they were startled into the air by a sparrowhawk.

An aerial view of a divided lake stretches towards a rugged mountain range, with a narrow straight line running through the water from the foreground to the mountains. The water is pink on one side and pale blue-grey on the other, with the mountains reflected across the calm surface.

Category: Wetlands: The Bigger Picture

Location: Stansbury Bay, Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA

Visbal documents how a single engineered line can reshape an entire wetland as part of a long-term project on the industrial impact on waterways. The pink comes from microbes thriving in extremely salty water after the area was cut off from fresh water.

A dead puma is suspended from a wire fence in a wide, windswept landscape in Argentine Patagonia. The animal is displayed as a hunting trophy, with open grassland and a cloudy sky stretching into the distance.

Location: Route 40, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina

Negroni records this scene of a dead puma displayed as a hunting trophy in Santa Cruz, a province in Argentine Patagonia. Although Santa Cruz banned puma hunting in 2025, illegal persecution continues.

Several tiny yellow-green spherical slime mould fruiting bodies rise from a dark surface on slender stalks. Fine thread-like structures extend from the rounded bodies, creating a delicate, miniature form against a softly blurred background.

Location: West Sussex, England, UK

Uddin's photographs explore the miniature world of slime moulds, organisms that can be barely visible to the naked eye and whose fruiting structures are just one to two millimetres high.

Original source Pictured: Winning entries for Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026

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