Upcoming

62nd Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Museo della Permanente, Milan

20 November 2026 — 07 February 2027

📍 La Permanente, Milan — see the place →

Photo: Giovanni Dall'Orto, via Wikimedia Commons (Attribution)

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition returns to Milan for its fifteenth edition there, in the halls of the Museo della Permanente, the 19th-century exhibition building on via Filippo Turati. On show are the hundred photographs awarded in the 62nd edition of the competition run by the Natural History Museum in London, which lends the exhibition, brought to Italy by the Associazione Culturale Radicediunopercento.

The winning images were chosen from more than 65,000 entries submitted from 121 countries and territories, judged anonymously by an international panel on creativity, originality and technical excellence. The Grand Title and category winners are announced in London on 13 October 2026, five weeks before the Milan opening.

Four of the honoured images have been released ahead of the announcement: a polar bear looking through a seal’s breathing hole in the Arctic sea ice, by Audun Rikardsen; an oxpecker cleaning its beak against a rhinoceros hide in late afternoon light, by Ernest Porter; a swallow caught against an aircraft landing at Heathrow, by the young photographer Jack Crockford; and a young leopard chasing a squirrel up a tree in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, by Allegra Hutton.

Four of the honoured images

Released ahead of the awards ceremony by the exhibition’s press office, and reproduced here with the credit each photographer carries on the image.

Seen from below through a ragged hole in Arctic sea ice, a polar bear looks down into the water against a blue sky — A polar bear looks down through a seal's breathing hole in the Arctic sea ice. Photo © Audun Rikardsen / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

An oxpecker with a red and yellow bill perched on the base of a rhinoceros horn, in warm late afternoon light — An oxpecker cleans its beak against a rhinoceros's hide in the late afternoon light. Photo © Ernest Porter / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

A small bird with swept-back wings crosses in front of an airliner seen from below against a pale sky — A swallow crosses the path of an airliner on approach to Heathrow. Photo © Jack Crockford / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Black and white photograph of a bare tree trunk, with a squirrel high on a branch and a young leopard climbing the far side — A young leopard climbs after a squirrel in Botswana's Okavango Delta. Photo © Allegra Hutton / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Practical details

When: 20 November 2026 – 7 February 2027
Where: Museo della Permanente, Via Filippo Turati 34, Milan
Organiser: Associazione Culturale Radicediunopercento — info@radicediunopercento.it, +39 351 6982286

Opening hours and ticket prices for the Milan run had not been published when this page was written. Entries for the 63rd edition of the competition open on 19 October and close on 3 December 2026.

📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer

Share your photos of events: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.

Four of the honoured images

Practical details

Share this: