Celebrating bird beauty and diversity around the world, the Bird Photographer of the Year has released the winners and finalists chosen from more than 33,000 images entered into the competition this year.
Bird Photographer of the Year (BPOTY) is a global photography competition open to professional and amateur photographers of all ages in eight categories: Best Portrait, Birds in the Environment, Bird Behaviour, Birds in Flight, Black and White, Urban Birds, Conservation (Single Image) and Creative Perspectives. Other awards are for Conservation, Portfolio, and Video.
The Overall Winner of the competition takes home a £3,500 cash prize, alongside the coveted title of Bird Photographer of the Year, while all the winners are published by Princeton University Press in a hardback coffee-table book and will be on display in the travelling BPOTY exhibition.
In support of conservation efforts, this year the bird photo competition donated more than £5,000 to partner charity Birds on the Brink, which provides vital funding to grass-roots bird conservation projects around the world.
Canadian photographer Liron Gertsman won this year’s grand prize for his atmospheric image ‘The Frigatebird and the Diamond Ring’ showing a Magnificent Frigatebird silhouetted against the total solar eclipse, taken in Mexico. His image also won Gold Award in the Birds in Flight category.
The Young Bird Photographer of the Year 2025 was awarded to 16-year-old Polish photographer Tomasz Michalski for his silhouette of a black vulture.
Overall Bird Photographer Winners
Taken in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico after well over a year of planning and about a week of in-person scouting, on April 8, 2024, Liron Getsman finally realized his dream of capturing a bird in front of a total solar eclipse.
“Totality was due to last almost 4 1/2 minutes, and I had enlisted the help of a boat to position myself near some islets off Mazatlán that were frequented by seabirds,” he recalled. “As the moon uncovered the sun’s edge at the end of totality, I captured this Magnificent Frigatebird in front of the spectacular eclipse phase known as the ‘diamond ring’, a moment that lasts just seconds.”
Tomasz Michaelski won the title of Young Bird Photographer Of the Year for this photo of a large vulture drying its wings taken during a trip to Central America.
Best Portfolio And Best Portraits
Sometime nature thrives in the most unexpected places. Due to unusually high water levels, a vast sunflower field was left unharvested. While this was a financial loss for the owner, it became a paradise for birds. The field, filled with high-calorie seeds, turned into a critical refuge for tens of thousands of goldfinches.
“It was as if they had arrived from miles around, drawn by this rare and abundant food source,” said Mateusz Piesiak. “For hours, hidden among the towering sunflowers, I observed and photographed this remarkable scene.”
The golden hue of the goldfinches contrasts stunningly against the monochrome landscape, emphasizing the vibrancy of life in an otherwise barren winter setting.
Giant petrels are the scavengers of the Southern Ocean, often seen feeding on carrion. The head of this individual is stained red with blood from a recent meal. Although their feeding habits may seem gruesome, these birds play a vital role in the ecosystem by preventing the spread of disease.
Despite their appearance, giant petrels are surprisingly devoted parents, with both males and females taking turns incubating their single egg and guarding their chick for weeks. Once heavily hunted for their oil, their populations have rebounded thanks to conservation efforts, although they still face threats from fishing practices and climate change.
“I was photographing a small flock of Alpine Choughs at 2,300 meters in the Swiss Alps when the temperature dropped to a biting −10°C and the wind-whipped snow across the ground in swirling gusts,” Luca Lorenz recalled. “Yet the choughs, perfectly adapted to these harsh conditions, seemed completely unfazed as they hopped around, searching for scraps left behind by tourists in a truly elegant way.”
Environment, Behavior Bird Photographer
Franco Banfi was literally in the Sea of Cortez near Los Islotes, a fistful of rocks among the Espíritu Santo archipelago in Mexico to document the unbelievable recovery of this marine protected area.
“Los Islotes is the southernmost breeding site of the Californian Sea Lion in the Northern Hemisphere, but it is a wonderfully wild place for many other reasons,” he explained. “I was fascinated by the extraordinary skills and elegance of Brandt’s Cormorants as they fed on an almost endless school of small pilchards.”
A Red Deer killed by a car in the pine forest near the Francesco Guffanti’s home in Italy provided an extraordinary opportunity to document the activity of carnivores and scavengers visiting the carcass. After foxes, crows and some small birds had paid a visit, most unexpectedly and despite the thick blanket of branches a Golden Eagle appeared and descended to feed on the carcass.
Birds In Flight, In Color and Black & White
Flocks of Barn Swallows, grace the sky over fields of marigolds around the village of Hiware Bazar in India.
A shag takes off from the Norwegian island of Hornøya. In the image it looks like a gigantic bird flying over all the others. In reality, the bird is simply flying close to the lens.
Urban Birds
In an increasingly urban world, many birds are forced to live on the doorsteps of humans.
Alex Pansier captured a fleeting encounter between nature and technology: A lone bird rests on a vast field of solar panels alongside a highway in the Netherlands to create a striking symbol of the tension between green energy and nature.
As we transition to sustainable power, the infrastructure often claims scarce space that could have been left for wildlife. This spontaneous moment captures that paradox: progress requires space — but at what cost to nature?
Eurasian Jays are not generally thought of as urban birds but can sometimes be found in parks and gardens in Czech Republic.
They almost always build their nests in trees, avoiding artificial structures. So when a friend reported finding a jay’s nest inside a streetlamp, Tomas Grim thought it was a joke: “To my amazement the nest was real. I waited for the ‘blue hour’ to combine the warm light from the lamp with the cold colors of this unique nest’s surroundings before taking this photo.”
This disused French chapel was occupied by Barn Owls that had no flat surfaces on which they could nest. So Benoit Henrion installed a nest box inside and was surprised and delighted when, 18 months later, a pair settled in and bred successfully. “The photo was taken from my hide tent at dusk, the light coming from the street lamps that had just been turned on,” he said.
“My idea behind this photograph was to capture a kingfisher flying over a piece of art work so that the two became merged,” Philipp Egger explained. ”I mounted my camera on a dead fallen tree across a small stream and pointed it vertically downwards at the artwork positioned just above the water’s surface. I then waited for days in my camouflaged tent not far away, triggering the camera with a radio remote release when the bird flew over the picture.”
Conservation Awards, Bird photographer
This category considers images that tell a story of conservation efforts or the struggle of a particular species.
Joshua Burch of Great Britain won the Conservation Award this year for his series of images following the dedication of ‘the loon rangers’ of the Charleston Lake Association working in the building, installation and ultimately the use of Common Loon nesting rafts.
“Having visited the lake late last year I was discussing the possibility of installing cameras on the loon nesting rafts after some of the nests had been predated and as a result the lake’s loon population started to decline,” he said.
“This year I was able to get the cameras for the loon rafts that will enable close-up views of the nest without causing any disturbance to the loon incubating the eggs.”
The Greater Adjutant bird is a “near threatened species” with a population of fewer than 1,500 mature individuals left in the wild. It’s tragic that such a rare bird must struggle for food at this garbage dump in Assam, India.
Open to professional and amateur photographers of all ages in eight categories, the Bird Photographer of the Year 2026 competition is now ready for entries.