Sony World Photography Awards 2026 celebrate architecture as evidence of the human experience

The Sony World Photography Awards announced its winners at a gala ceremony in London this evening (16 April 2026), honouring photographers across a range of categories from over 430,000 submissions from more than 200 countries and territories. The evening's most prestigious title – Photographer of the Year 2026 – went to Citlali Fabián, a visual artist from the Yalalteca Indigenous community in Mexico, currently based in London, for her series Bilha, Stories of my Sisters.

Architecture & Design at the Sony World Photography Awards

The Architecture & Design prize went to Joy Saha for Homes of Haor, an aerial study of vernacular buildings in the Haor wetlands of Kishoreganj, Bangladesh. The series documents a community adapted to seasonal flooding – homes perched on raised mounds that become islands during monsoon season, with boats as the primary means of transport. Photographed from above, the elevated settlements, roads and livestock spaces comprise an innovative response to an unforgiving environment.

Second place went to André Tezza for Everyday Structures, a documentation of small neighbourhood grocery stores on the outskirts of Curitiba, Brazil. These modest, family-run buildings – often merging domestic and commercial space – represent what Tezza calls 'an architecture of resistance' against the homogenising force of large retail chains. The work makes the case that architectural beauty is not confined to city centres or celebrated landmarks, but persists in the peripheral, the overlooked and the ordinary.

Third place was awarded to Chen Liang for a series exploring the watchtowers of Jiangmen in Guangdong Province. Built during the Republican era (1912-1949), largely by members of the Chinese diaspora, the towers fuse Chinese and Western architectural influences. The Kaiping Diaolou and surrounding villages were designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2007.

The shortlisted works were equally varied in geography and ambition. In Ad Astra, Cristopher Rogel Blanquet and Daniel Ochoa de Olza photograph the US-Mexico border wall by night, capturing how darkness transforms the structure. In Historical Architecture of Iran, Farshid Rahimi Kalahroudi documents the country's historic mosques, public spaces and vernacular structures. Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni turn their cameras on the abandoned Hotel Florio in Puglia, scene of a 1979 Camorra summit, recording its empty rooms and overgrown grounds.

In Night Shift, Mathieu Moindron photographs Sendai's service districts – shops, car parks and petrol stations – after hours, using only available light. Peter Lipton's Kabe: The Walls of Tohoku documents the tsunami barriers built along Japan's north-east coast after 2011, while Stephan Zirwes' Second-Hand Houses features holiday homes built from reclaimed materials. Finally, Tomasz Kawecki photographs the Mausoleum of Martyrdom of Polish Villages in Michniów, a 2009 memorial whose segmented form allows light and weather into the interior.

Taken together, this year's Architecture & Design submissions suggest a global photography community increasingly drawn to architecture not as spectacle, but as evidence of the people who inhabit it, and how they live, adapt and remember.

Sony World Photography Awards 2026 exhibition runs 17 April – 4 May 2026 at Somerset House, London