Nature and Humans 2026: A Competition Worth Entering

↑ Protección by Victor Ortega

By Selina Sahba  |  July 2026

The contest is built around a straightforward but important premise: Photography can change the way people think about the natural world. Its categories reflect that belief, combining traditional wildlife and landscape photography with dedicated conservation categories that ask photographers to document the relationship between humans and nature, for better or worse.

What Makes This Competition Different

Most wildlife photography competitions reward technical skill and visual impact. The Nature and Humans Competition does that too, but it also places significant weight on meaning. The conservation categories specifically look for images that explore how human activity intersects with the natural world, whether that means habitat destruction, wildlife coexistence, or the quieter, more ambiguous ways people and animals share space.

The contest spans 15 categories in total. Three are dedicated conservation categories: a thematic series, a single image, and a Spain-specific category. There’s also a “Nature Told by Women” category, six thematic categories covering mammals, birds, oceans, other animals, landscape, and creative photography, plus special awards for young photographers, children, and a public vote. That breadth means photographers working across vastly different subjects and styles can find a relevant category.

The jury is made up of renowned international photographers, biologists, and communicators, and the contest is directed by Spanish nature photographer Arturo de Frías.

Previous Winners Set the Bar

To get a sense of what the competition rewards, the third edition results offer a useful reference. That year drew photographers from 49 countries and received over 3,300 submissions.

In the conservation categories, the winning thematic series, Uncovering What’s Hidden by @human.cruelties, used intimate imagery to examine industrial animal agriculture. Runner-up Kianoush Saadati’s series Between Fear and Understanding took a different approach, focusing on the difficult balance between people and wildlife in shared landscapes.

The single image conservation winner, Screaming in the Wind by Francisco Negroni, and the Spain category winner, I Want my Soda by Javier Murcia — an octopus photographed navigating a sea littered with discarded cans — both show the range of approaches the judges respond to. Neither image is subtle, but both communicate their subject clearly and without unnecessary embellishment.

Outside the conservation categories, the third edition rewarded equally strong work. Hira Punjabi won the Mammals category with Bat Bath, Andrea Izzotti took Birds with Cormorhunt, and Lesley Rochat won Oceans with Ghost of the Kelp Forest. The public vote went to Alexandre Bès for Unreal Atmosphere.

Why Enter

Beyond the prize money and equipment vouchers, the competition functions as a platform. Winners and finalists are featured in an online gallery that draws an international audience, and the contest has built a reputation for recognizing work that goes beyond the technically impressive to make a statement.

For photographers who are already documenting conservation issues or working in nature photography, this is a competition that takes that work seriously. For those who haven’t yet considered entering their images in a competition with an explicit conservation focus, it’s worth looking at the previous winners to see whether your work fits.

Entries are open until September 28, 2026. Full details, category rules, and the gallery of previous winners are available at www.natureandhumans.com.