16 Striking Photos From This Year’s Best Wildlife Photographers

From a black bear relaxing in a swimming pool to bonnet mushrooms glowing up the night sky, see some of the winning photos from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.

An elephant holds its trunk out as it holds onto a dead calf.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year Federico Veronesi was tracking elephants in Namibia’s Huab River Valley when he witnessed this powerful moment of an elephant carrying a dead calf. Some researchers suggest these behaviors could indicate an elephant’s journey to understanding death, while others interpret them as possible displays of grief.
Federico Veronesi
ByRichard Kemeny
Published October 13, 2026

One morning in Namibia’s Huab River Valley, Federico Veronesi rose to pick up the tracks of an elephant group he had seen the day before while leading a safari. He followed them to a dry riverbed, where he noticed a strange drag mark in the sand. He thought it was perhaps a trace of a bull elephant dragging a log as a show of strength. But when he caught up with the family, he saw the true source: a female elephant carrying a deceased calf, its leg wedged between her trunk and tusk.

In “The Aftermath,” Veronesi captures this tragic moment in an image that earned him the title of 61st Wildlife Photographer of the Year, awarded today by London’s Natural History Museum. “It was really such a private moment, I almost thought maybe I shouldn't take these photographs,” says Veronesi. “But then I actually realized this is such a deep and fascinating window into the soul of these creatures.”

This year’s competition received a record-breaking 65,403 entries from 121 countries and territories. The competition celebrated category winners whose photographs showcase powerful stories from the natural world. The grand prize went to Veronesi’s portrait, which the judges found to be a challenging yet impactful insight into complex animal behavior.

A coyote walks along a dirt path high above the city, as the cityscape cascades into the background.
Winner of the Photojournalist Story Award, American photographer Loren Elliott captured a lone coyote padding along a trail in Bernal Heights Park, above San Francisco. Elliott has watched this coyote hunt rodents in the park, along with the rest of its resident pack for his photography series, Wily Coyotes of San Francisco, which documents the lives of the often-misunderstood animals. While coyotes occasionally prey on domestic animals, they bring natural benefits such as controlling rodent populations.
Loren Elliott

(What Are Animals Thinking? They Feel Empathy, Grieve, Seek Joy Just Like Us.)

“This photograph works on so many levels,” said competition chair Kathy Moran in a press release. “Emotionally it’s a gut punch, heartbreakingly poignant. Intellectually it’s proof that animals have cognition. This photograph says it all!”

Both African and Asian elephants have complex behaviors in response to death, including evidence of relatives and non-relatives guarding, carrying, and inspecting the dead in a way that has led scientists to wonder if these behaviors are mourning rituals. “There is a lot going on in them trying to make sense of death, in a way, and this baby was certainly part of that relationship,” says Veronesi.

After he captured this shot, Veronesi watched the female elephant carry the calf up a rocky hill, occasionally setting it down just to feed on a small bush before gathering it up again. Curiously, the elephant didn’t look like she’d recently given birth, so he contacted a local elephant research project to find out more. The researchers said this female had lost a baby a few years earlier and has since been seen picking up other dead calves. “It's probably a way for her to try to reconnect to that experience in a way,” says Veronesi. “It shows an even higher level of complexity of emotions and reactions.”

(How This Orphaned Elephant Defied the Odds.)

With his image, Veronesi hopes to convey the inner complexity of elephants, even if it is something we don’t yet fully understand. “It's very clear that emotionally we are much more similar to them than what is thought,” he says.

Capturing the shot was challenging, says Veronesi, requiring a quick reaction in the moment and—as always—having the camera ready. “I try to make that flow, that connection between the moment and and taking the photograph as streamlined as possible, because these moments are all fleeting, ephemeral,” he says.

Presenting the image in black and white also serves to heighten the connection between animal and viewer, he says. Through this connection, his hope is to inspire people to consider elephants as individuals, in a way that may benefit decisions around their conservation. “Eventually that will help to shape the relationship we have with animals and nature,” he says.

The tail of a scorpion is seen as sand sprays behind it while digging a hole.
Indian photographer Sitaram Raul won the Behavior: Invertebrates category, with this dynamic photograph of a Buthacus scorpion burrowing into the dunes of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. Sitaram had observed many scorpions hunting for prey at night around the village of Sam. As the sun rose, the scorpions started burrowing to avoid the heat. Sitaram timed the exposure to catch the sand suspended midair, excavated and thrown out by the scorpion’s sharp pincers.
Sitaram Raul
A shrimp crawls on the side of a pearl oyster, which is orange with circular indentations along it.
Liang Fu, a photographer from China, spent a year documenting a pair of pearl oyster shrimps as they lived out their lives inside a black-lipped pearl oyster in the Philippines. These shrimps live within the oysters, which are widely cultivated for their pearls. Fu used a small extended lens to capture the shot without disturbing the oyster or shrimps.
Liang Fu
A silhouette of a bird sitting on a tree with blurred purple, yellow and green colors in the background.
Konrad Gräeter won the category for photographers ages 15 to 17 for “Birdsong Painted in Light.” Crouching low on a steep vineyard slope in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Gräeter captured a male blackbird singing in the early hours of an April morning.
Konrad Gräeter
The stems of mushrooms in bunches glow yellow in a dark forest.
Using ultraviolet light, Greek photographer Agorastos Papatsanis lit up the glowing yellow stems of bonnet mushrooms, growing out of a decaying log on the lower slopes of Mount Olympus. Humans cannot see UV light, but it can be revealed through the phenomenon of fluorescence, where light is absorbed in one wavelength and emitted in another. Mycologists are using this to distinguish fungi based on their unique fluorescent patterns.
Agorastos Papatsanis
A large flock of birds flies through a field during a sunset, creating an orange color with silhouettes of other animals outlined in the background.
In “Flock of Gold,” Hungarian photographer Bence Máté showcases what he describes as the “breathtaking” sight of thousands of wings beating in unison. Taken in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya, the image shows a flock of red-billed queleas landing to take a drink from a small pond.
Bence Máté
A white polar bear looks down a hole in the ice, as a photo is taken of him from below the surface, creating a perfect circle.
Norway’s Audun Rikardsen captured a seal’s-eye view of a polar bear, peering through a breathing hole in the Arctic ice of Svalbard. A biologist and photographer, Rikardsen noticed polar bear tracks close to the seal hole and drilled another hole near it for his underwater camera. Using a motion sensor set on the ice above, he snapped this shot of the polar bear after an eight-hour wait.
Audun Rikardsen
Small blue spheres rest on a leaf with two holes in it, as small caterpillar-like creatures crawl over them.
Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas won this year’s Rising Star Award for a series of photographs depicting some of the world’s tiniest animals in the finest of detail. In “Caterpillar Breakout,” Tinker-Tsavalas shows us a batch of tiny caterpillars chewing their way out of eggs, which he discovered under the leaf of a cherry tree in a park in Belfast, Ireland.
Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
A bear sits on the stairs of a pool and scratches its face as the pool deck around is empty.
Even black bears need to relax and take a dip from time to time, a sentiment captured by Loren Elliott in “Pooltime Pastime.” Elliott spent hours watching through the window of a local home in the “bear country” of Los Angeles County. “I most like how it shows the very common overlap of wildlife and residential living,” says Elliott.
Loren Elliott
A gray chameleon walks through tan sand as more sand sprays in his face.
South African photographer Dewald Tromp recalls finding it difficult to breathe as the wind and sand picked up around him in Namibia’s Namib Desert. Amid this sandstorm, he managed to capture a Namaqua chameleon battling it out nearby. These desert specialists harvest moisture from the air directly, channeling dew from their skin to their mouths via microscopic grooves.
Dewald Tromp
Blurs of yellow streak across the photo with unharvested sunflowers in the background.
Michal Michalski, from Poland, used a slow shutter speed to blur the movement of mixed flocks of birds against a backdrop of leafless birch trees. The effect creates the illusion the trees are still covered in autumn foliage, in an image that earned Michalski a win in the Natural Artistry category.
Michał Michalski
Up close photo of a hornets nest, with yellow swirl texture and two hornets in the nest.
Krittika Mukherjee was highly commended in the 11-14 Years category for this photograph of a lesser banded hornet nest, which she had watched with fascination as it was built in her garden in India. She used a long telephoto lens to watch from a safe distance as a hornet brought back material to continue the construction.
Krittika Mukherjee
A salamander holds onto eggs close to its chest and clings onto blades of grass under water
American photographer Anton Sorokin won the Behavior: Animals category for this shot of a California newt laying eggs in a pond, while clasping vegetation that already holds another newt’s clutch. As the pond was too dirty to swim, Sorokin waded along the edge and carefully dipped his camera and lighting beneath the surface to capture this moment of parental care.
Anton Sorokin
A dolphin swims at the surface of dark blue water with two other dolphins swimming below and on either side of the one on top.
In “Dolphin Tulip,” Chelsea Mayer captures the majestic sight of three dolphins appearing to meld into one unit resembling a tulip. Mayer took the photograph in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, California, which has been dubbed the Galapagos of North America.
Chelsea Mayer
The silhouette of a mushroom is illuminated from behind by small specs of colorful spores.
Working at night, German photographer Britta Springler backlit a parasol mushroom with a torch, before capturing the spores flowing out into the night and swirling in the breeze. These wild mushrooms are picked and eaten by many people around the world, with some research suggesting they may contain antibacterial and antidepressant properties.
Britta Springler
Richard Kemeny is a freelance writer based in London. He regularly reports on natural history topics for National Geographic, and is the author of Navigating Biodiversity, published by UniPress in 2024.