Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 reveals selection of highly commended images

The world’s leading wildlife photography competition, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, presents a sneak peek of its sixty-first competition, which will be showcased in an exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London, from Friday 17 October 2025.

The exhibition will spotlight 100 inspiring and powerful images of our natural world, selected from a record-breaking 60,636 entries and judged anonymously on their creativity, originality and technical excellence by an international panel of expert judges across wildlife photography, filmmaking, science and conservation.

Among the newly released images features a dramatic stand-off between a lion and a cobra by Gabriella Comi, a portrait of an inquisitive pack of Arctic wolves by Amit Eshel and awe-inspiring photographs of flamingoes, coyotes and red deer by some of the finest emerging young wildlife photographers today, some as young as nine years old.

The category winners and the prestigious Grand Title and Young Grand Title awards will be announced on Tuesday 14 October 2025 at a ceremony hosted at the Natural History Museum by wildlife TV presenters and conservationists Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin. The ceremony will be available to watch live on the Natural History Museum’s YouTube channel.

The exhibition will also help visitors understand how our planet’s habitats are changing. Alongside the award-winning photographs, the sixty-first exhibition will provide insight into some of the habitats pictured by including the Natural History Museum’s groundbreaking metric, the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII). BII measures how much of a region’s natural biodiversity remains on a scale of 0 to 100%. Adopted as an official Global Framework Biodiversity indicator for decision-making, it is an essential tool for understanding, monitoring and communicating biodiversity changes on a global scale and tracking international progress towards conservation goals.

Kathy Moran, Chair of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Jury, says: “Selected from a record-breaking over 60,000 images, this preview presents just a small insight into the 100 awe-inspiring, impactful and moving images in store for visitors to our exhibition in October. As an advocate for the power of photography, there is nothing more rewarding or moving than seeing our relationship to the natural world, in all its complexity and splendour, shared on the world’s biggest platform for wildlife photography.”

Dr Doug Gurr, Director of the Natural History Museum, says: “Now in its sixty-first year, we are thrilled to continue Wildlife Photographer of the Year as a powerful platform for visual storytelling, showing the diversity, beauty and complexity of the natural world and humanity's relationship to it. With the inclusion of our Biodiversity Intactness Index, this year’s exhibition will be our best combination of great artistry and groundbreaking science yet, helping visitors to become inspired to be advocates for our planet.”

Tickets are on-sale now for the sixty-first edition of Wildlife Photographer of the Year which launches at the Natural History Museum on Friday 17 October 2025 and runs until Sunday 12 July 2026. The exhibition will also embark on a UK and international tour to inspire millions to appreciate and conserve the natural world.