Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 award winners were revealed Tuesday, October 13, 2026, in a ceremony at London's Natural History Museum — and Italian photographer Federico Veronesi took the grand title with a black-and-white image of a Namibian elephant carrying a deceased calf in her trunk.
The photograph, titled "The Aftermath," was shot in the Huab River Valley. According to the Natural History Museum's official press release, Veronesi was tracking elephants when he noticed an unusual trail of drag marks across a dry riverbed. He followed the tracks, caught up with a family group, and watched a female emerge carrying the calf — its leg wedged between her tusk and trunk. It's the kind of moment that quietly asks a question no wildlife photographer wants to have to answer, and Veronesi chose to keep shooting rather than turn away.
I don't shoot wildlife. My kit is MFT — a Lumix GH7 paired with the OM System 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO II — and the closest I come to "field work" is walking around Hong Kong at street-photography shutter speeds. But I follow Wildlife Photographer of the Year because the technical lessons transfer to every genre. Veronesi's framing has nothing to do with how much gear he brought; it's about being there long enough that the unusual finds you. That's a lesson any documentary or street shooter recognizes.
A few of this year's category winners caught my eye:
- Oscar Whitfield won Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year with "Labour of Love," a shot of a dung beetle pushing its cargo across dry dusty ground. Whitfield lay flat to shoot at eye level and used high light sensitivity — a reminder that iso you used to fear is fine when the moment is fleeting.
- Loren Elliott took the Photojournalist Story Award for documenting coyotes along a single dirt trail in Bernal Heights Park, San Francisco. Urban wildlife photos almost never win major nature titles; this one did. There's clearly appetite for the city-meets-animal angle.
- Francisco Negroni won the Photojournalism category for a single image: a dead puma hung as a hunting trophy in Argentine Patagonia, even though Santa Cruz banned puma hunting in 2025. The composition is wide and the sky is heavy.
- Tony Wu won Under Water for a shot of Abbott's moray eels mating — the kind of behavior photographers spend careers trying to find once.
For the first time in WPY's 62-year history, both the overall and Young Wildlife Photographer winners were recognized for black-and-white images. If you've spent any time arguing with yourself about whether to convert your files to mono, take this as a hint: monochrome rewards patient subjects and patient shooters.
The 62nd Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition opens to the public at the Natural History Museum, London, on Friday, October 16, 2026, and will tour the UK and internationally into 2027. Tickets are on the NHM website. The full category list, including the Wetlands: The Bigger Picture, Urban Wildlife, and Natural Artistry categories, is on the BBC's coverage.