Wildlife Photographer of the Year reveals first-look from a record-breaking number of entries submitted into its sixty-first competition

Wildlife Photographer of the Year reveals first-look from a record-breaking number of entries submitted into its sixty-first competition - Natural History Museum

A lion stands on a rock and looks down at a cobra snake slithering towards it. — Image: Gabriella Comi

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.