Open Competition: Category Winners & Shortlists Announced

Exhibition 17 April - 5 May

• The Sony World Photography Awards announces the 10 category winners and shortlists of the 2025 Open competition, recognising the best single images of 2024
• Open Photographer of the Year to be announced on 16 April at a special gala ceremony in London
• 2025 exhibition opens at Somerset House from 17 April - 5 May 2025

The Sony World Photography Awards reveals today the 10 category winners and shortlisted photographers in the 2025 Open competition. Now in its 18th year, the Open competition celebrates the ability of an individual photograph to capture and distil a singular moment, and to evoke a broader narrative. Entrants were invited to submit their strongest single images from 2024, and the winners and shortlists represent some of the most arresting photography from the past year.

Across this year’s competitions, over 419,000 images from over 200 countries and territories were submitted to the Awards.

The Open Photographer of the Year will be announced at the Awards’ ceremony in London on 16 April and will receive a $5,000 (USD) cash prize and a range of Sony digital imaging equipment. Selected winning and shortlisted images will be shown as part of the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House from 17 April - 5 May 2025, and will then travel to other locations.

This year's Open Category Winners are:

ARCHITECTURE

Xuecheng Liu (China Mainland) for the photograph Centre of the Cosmos, which shows New York’s iconic Times Square from above, using a very wide angle to highlight the expanse of the city.

CREATIVE

Jonell Francisco (Philippines) for Kem the Unstoppable, an elegantly photographed collage portrait, alluding to Renaissance traditions of portraiture.

LANDSCAPE

Ng Guang Ze (Singapore) for his mesmerising black-and-white shot of a stream meandering through grasslands into a lake in the distance, taken in Wenhai, Lijiang.

LIFESTYLE

Hajime Hirano (Japan) for his meticulously composed image of a street vendor selling electronic parts in Akihabara, once Japan's largest electronics town following a period of rapid economic growth in the late 1950s.

MOTION

Olivier Unia (France) for Tbourida La Chute, in which the photographer captures the danger and excitement of the moment a rider is thrown from their mount during a ‘tbourida,’ a traditional Moroccan equestrian performance.

NATURAL WORLD & WILDLIFE

Estebane Rezkallah (France) for The Whale Raft, depicting a group of polar bears feasting on the carcass of a whale in east Greenland.
 

OBJECT

Sussi Charlotte Alminde (Denmark) for Octopuses in the Sky, showcasing elaborate handmade kites at the Fanø International Kite Fliers Meeting, one of the world’s largest kite flying events.

PORTRAITURE

Yeintze Boutamba (Gabon) for Encounter, a tender portrait of two people shot in the intimacy of a bedroom. The photographer wanted to immortalise this moment for the sitters.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Khairizal Maris (Indonesia) for Celebrating Football Club Victories, which pictures the elation of fans celebrating a win by their local football club by lighting flares in Bandung, West Java.

TRAVEL

Matjaž Šimic (Slovenia) for Ask a Shaman, depicting a group of shamans in La Paz, Bolivia, where they play a major role in Native Bolivian traditional culture, shot against the brightly painted local architecture.

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