Photo: Howard Shooter, On the Phone
Photo: Howard Shooter, On the Phone
The competition, formerly Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year, is now known as the World Food Photography Awards supported by Tenderstem® Bimi® Broccolini.
The 2026 competition opens for entries on 9 September 2025.
The competition closes on 8 February 2026.
Shortlisted entrants will be notified by the end of February 2026 and higher resolution files will be requested. NOTE: Requests may be made at short notice. Please ensure you have access to the hi res files if on location.
The judging of the shortlisted entries will take place in March 2026, and the winners will be announced on 2 June 2026.
The title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards 2026 will be awarded for the single image judged to be the most striking and memorable of all the eligible category winning entries.
The Overall Winner of the World Food Photography Awards 2026 will receive £5000 GBP.
A single sum of £35.00 is required per adult entrant and allows up to 6 individual photographic entries. Further entries may be submitted at an additional fee of £7 per entry.
Single entries may be submitted to the On the Phone category at £7 GBP per entry. £2 GBP from each entry to this category will be donated to Action Against Hunger.
Portfolio Categories: The fee for the Hotel Art Group Food Stylist category and the Marks & Spencer Rising Star Award will be £35 per portfolio of 5 images submitted.
Entry to the Young (under 18) categories is free of charge. A maximum of five entries may be submitted to the Young (under 18) categories.
Entry to the Student Food Photographer of the Year category is free of charge. A maximum of five entries may be submitted to the Student Food Photographer of the Year category. For the purposes of this competition, ’Student’ is defined as a student (full or part-time) currently attending a photography course at a recognised college or university.
Once entered, images cannot be withdrawn unless the Organisers are notified that there is a permissions issue, in which case the images will be withdrawn on request of the copyright holder / entrant but no refund will be payable.
Payment is made online using Paypal. Payment may be made with a credit or debit card via the PayPal platform. A PayPal account is not required to pay by debit or credit card.
It is the responsibility of each entrant to ensure that he or she has read and abided by the World Food Photography Awards Terms and Conditions and that by entering the competition agrees that their entries comply with all of the competition requirements.
Photographs must have been photographed by, or entered on behalf of, the original photographer or, for the Food Stylist category, entered by, or on behalf, of the Food Stylist and submitted with the permission of the original photographer.
Images must have no identifying marks or key words allocated to them.
Images may be moved into suitable alternative categories at Judges' discretion.
Entries that are found not to comply with the World Food Photography Awards Terms and Conditions will be disqualified without discussion and without refund or compensation.
The decision of the judges is final. Negotiation will not be entered into with respect to any such decision by the judges or organisers of the World Food Photography Awards.
Entrants into the Adult competition must be aged 18 or over on the closing date of the 8 February 2026.
Entrants into the Young competition must be aged 17 or under on the closing date of the 8 February 2026.
Entries may be submitted from any country.
No image which has won the title of Overall Winner of a photographic competition can be entered.
The competition is open to anyone except:
For the purposes of this competition a Food Influencer is deemed to be a person writing about food who features their work online on a regular basis.
The World Food Photography Awards is open to entrants from any country in the world, from any background, who make up its much-valued global community of photographers.
At the same time, the World Food Photography Awards is committed to upholding values of respect for all. That is, for people of any nationality, race, religion, ethnicity, age, physical ability, appearance, sexuality or gender.
However, it is an important requirement of participation in the Awards that entrants must also uphold that respect for all.
If it is brought to the attention of the Organisers of the Awards that an entrant has broken this requirement by, for example, posting offensive content on social media, then they may be disqualified.
After full investigation of the allegation, the Organisers’ decision will be final and no subsequent communication on the matter will undertaken.
Finalists may be offered commercial opportunities in the form of an online gallery with images being made available for sale. Images may also be published in an exhibition catalogue, promotional material and on the World Food Photography Awards website. Where a commercial benefit is likely to arise, permission will be sought in advance and Terms and Conditions will be agreed.
Commended images may be published in an exhibition catalogue, promotional material and on the World Food Photography Awards website.
Entrants will be required to register at: www.worldfoodphotographyawards.com/register
Information regarding the competition will be sent via email from info@worldfoodphotographyawards.com. Please ensure that you have added this email address to your email manager program as the organisers cannot be held responsible for emails that do not arrive due to the entrant’s email security settings or restrictions placed by their Internet Service Provider.
Note:
The winner of the Errazuriz Wine Photographer of the Year category is not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The winner of the World of Drinks category is not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The winner of the Student Food Photographer of the Year category is not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The winner of the Marks & Spencer Rising Star Award is not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The winner of the Hotel Art Group Food Stylist category is not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The winner of the Bimi® Prize is not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The winners of the Jamie Oliver Youth Prize categories are not eligible for the title of Overall Winner, World Food Photography Awards
The Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers is open to those who identify as women
The Organisers reserve the right to remove, change or re-title individual categories prior to opening the awards for entry.
Where a prize is offered by a Third Party, Food Photographer of the Year Awards Ltd is not bound to deliver the exact prize that has been offered by the Third Party if unforeseen events should take place to prevent delivery, but will do its utmost to ensure that a similar prize is delivered instead. No monetary compensation will be offered.
Still photographs
Entries must be digital files, submitted as JPEGs and at 1920 pixels along the longest dimension. Scans of transparencies and negatives are permitted. No borders, watermarks, signatures or added text must be included on the image.
Digitally captured images must be taken on a device that can produce a suitable high resolution file for printing.
For the initial entry into the competition images:
If your work is shortlisted:
You must be able to supply a high resolution file, suitable for printing in all media and for inclusion in an Exhibition. These images must be of a suitable resolution to be printed at A2 size. NOTE: Requests may be made at short notice. Please ensure you have access to the hi res files if on location.
Digital files which have been enhanced using photographic editing software must not have had the integrity and subject matter of the photograph changed. If the judges consider that this has occurred then the entry may be disqualified.
Food Photographer of the Year Awards Ltd does not accept AI-generated photos for submission.
Only photographs captured with a camera and, if edited, by the photographer, without the use of AI algorithms or any other form of artificial intelligence, are eligible for entry.
The competition is dedicated to human creativity and originality in photography and therefore AI-generated content is not permitted.
The Organisers reserve the right to request RAW files in order to establish authenticity and integrity of the entered image(s).
Any entries which are found to be created with AI will be automatically disqualified by the Organisers of the Awards with no subsequent communication undertaken.
Any entrant attempting to pass off AI-generated images as their own artistic work may be permanently excluded from participation in the awards.
The panel of Judges will be appointed by the Organisers and will agree to Terms and Conditions of judging ensuring the aims of the awards are maintained throughout.
Should there be a category in which there has not been an entry of sufficient quality then the Organisers reserve the right not to award a winning entry to that category.
We understand that entrants and later shortlisted finalists will be very excited about submitting their entry or being shortlisted. However, under no circumstances should any reference or link be made on social media sites to those images being entered to the World Food Photography Awards, including but not limited to: Instagram, X, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Blogs etc. The reasons for this are:
1) To ensure that judging is undertaken fairly and all entries remain anonymous until the Shortlist has been published. Up until this point the judges do not know who the artists are and therefore any entries highlighted on these social media channels prior to the Shortlist being published may be immediately disqualified.
2) Secondly, and perhaps more importantly to the artist, uploading the entries onto social media platforms gives away your exclusive rights to control where, how, and by whom your work is used. If you would like to know more about this visit: artists-bill-of-rights.org/guides/social-networks-a-competitions
The World Food Photography Awards is proud to support the Artist’s Bill of Rights and works in accordance with the conditions they expect organisers to follow.
Each winner and runner up entrant agrees to participate in publicity related to the competition and to the use of their name and a photograph of both themselves and their entered image(s) for the use of advertising the competition and exhibition. There will be no extra payment for this.
Each entry must be the original work of the entrant and the entrant must have complete copyright for this work. Previously published images may be submitted to any category however where linked to a third party, rights must have been sought and written permission received for use. Images submitted to the Production Paradise Previously Published category must have been previously published and rights must have been sought and written permission received for use and made available on request.
Entries to the Food Stylist category must be submitted with the permission of the photographer and owner of the copyright.
It is the sole responsibility of the entrant to confirm that, if required, each person depicted in the entry has granted permission to be portrayed as shown. Any costumes, props or other materials used must be rented or borrowed with the permission of the owner, and all other relevant permissions must have been obtained.
It is the sole responsibility of the entrant to ensure that images submitted do not contain threatening, false, misleading, abusive, harassing, libelous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic or profane content,
It is the sole responsibility of the entrant to ensure that images submitted do not contain any material that could constitute or encourage conduct which would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any law.
Entrants agree to fully indemnify the World Food Photography Awards (Food Photographer of the Year Awards Ltd) and its sponsors in respect of all costs owing to any person or entity arising by reason of your breaching any of the foregoing.
The copyright in all images submitted to the awards will remain with the entrant who will be credited in accordance with the Terms and Conditions.
In addition, your moral rights are respected. Whenever your work is published by the Owners you will be credited. Failure to publish a credit due to error or oversight shall not be deemed a breach of this condition. Where images are used pre judging to promote the awards, images will be kept anonymous until judging is complete whereupon post credits will be given.
By entering the awards, each entrant grants to the Owners a non-exclusive, irrevocable license to reproduce, publish, and communicate to the public, by any means, exhibit their image and copies of their image in all media throughout the world in relation to the awards and the exhibition for no other purpose including but not limited to all use in the context of:
In some of the above circumstances, commercial opportunities may exist for winning photographers to benefit from the use of their image: where a commercial benefit is likely to arise, permission will be sought in advance and Terms and Conditions will be agreed.
Images submitted to the competition, formerly Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year, now known as the World Food Photography Awards supported by Tenderstem® Bimi® Broccolini, will be held within a secure electronic archive and these images, always credited to the photographer, may be used by the Organisers solely for the promotion of the Awards or exhibition. The Organisers may display credited Finalist and Commended images on the website. Entrants wishing to withdraw their images from the archive may do so by written request after a period of 3 years from the announcement of winners.
Proof of electronic submission is not proof of receipt by the award Organisers.
The Organisers cannot accept liability for any loss or damage of any image entered into the awards however caused.
The Organisers cannot accept liability for the misuse of images as in a third party not complying with the award’s photo credit guide issued to them.
Non-winning digital images entered into the award will be retained by the Organisers.
No entries will be returned by the Organisers and therefore entrants are advised to keep a copy of their digital files for their own use.
“This is a prestigious and high profile photography competition, and getting to the final represents recognition of a high level of achievement in photography.”
Martin Chamberlain, UK
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The awards celebrate the very best in food photography and film from around the world
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