Young people look at the same places we do and see something entirely different. Hand them a camera, and suddenly a river tells a story about loss. A horse entering water becomes two worlds at once. A moment at a BMX event lines up with a landing plane in a way that feels impossible until you see the proof.
The Sony World Photography Awards just announced 11 finalists in their 2026 Student and Youth competitions—photographers aged 19 and younger, plus university students. Their work doesn't announce itself with exclamation marks. It sits with you.
Stories That Stay
Aakash Gulzar documented the pigeon keepers of Srinagar, Kashmir, across rooftops and shrines. His subject Owais, 23, tends over a thousand birds for a local businessman, spending his days feeding and cleaning. "It's exhausting at times," Owais says, "but I've grown attached to them. This is what I want to do; I can't imagine doing anything else." The photographs show quiet devotion—a man and his birds moving through courtyards where visitors pause to photograph the pigeons moving freely through prayer spaces.
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Jubair Ahmed Arnob from Bangladesh captured something darker. A man stands in a riverbed that no longer holds fish, while plastic dolphins float above him on balloons. Nature replaced by commodity. Survival dressed as celebration. The image doesn't explain itself—it makes you sit with what's been lost.
Other finalists caught moments that feel almost impossible. Jane Mozzi photographed a BMX rider mid-backflip in Buenos Aires, and in the same frame, a plane lands behind them—the timing so perfect it looks like the aircraft is launching the rider forward. It happened in one take. Riley Shickle framed Mount Fuji through autumn leaves at Lake Kawaguchi, a tourist watching the view unfold. Abdallah Islam placed a modern red-fabric sculpture in front of the Great Pyramid, creating a conversation between geometry and 4,500 years of stone.
Keira Pereira found a red-eyed tree frog in a Costa Rican rainforest, perched on a leaf at night, and used controlled light to isolate it—capturing the alert stillness of nocturnal life. Jeirin Anton photographed a peacock preening against golden light, maintaining its regal appearance between watchful glances.
Matte Dixon's series Suspiria de Profundis works with analogue photography and gothic atmospheres to explore how we make meaning from emptiness. The images feel like relics, inviting viewers into their own questions about existence and time.
What ties these photographs together isn't a style or a technique. It's attention. These young photographers are looking closely at what's in front of them—a person and their devotion, a river that's changed, a fraction of a second where timing becomes magic, a frog's alert eyes, a view someone traveled to see. They're not trying to convince you of anything. They're showing you what they noticed.
The winners will be announced on April 16, 2026, in London.
