THE 2026 PHOTO REVIEW 41ST ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION
The Photo Review’s 41st Annual International Photography Competition is now open for entries. This year’s juror is Dr. Sarah Kennel, the inaugural Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center for Works on Paper at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts — one of the country’s leading photography scholars.
Prize-winning work will be exhibited at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, and accepted entries will be reproduced in The Photo Review journal and seen by thousands of photographers, collectors, and curators worldwide.
Ron Cooper
Lauren Grayhawk, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, 2018
Archival pigment print, 12 x 15″
2025 First Prize Winner
Why Enter
The Photo Review has been championing fine art photography since 1976. Entering this competition puts your work in front of a distinguished juror, a national audience, and a community of serious collectors and curators. Past winners have gone on to solo exhibitions, publication in leading photography magazines, and sales to collectors nationwide — all through the visibility The Photo Review provides.
What You Win
- Exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia (prizewinners)
- Reproduction in The Photo Review journal and on our website (all accepted entries)
- Feature in several Photo Review web galleries (Editor’s Selections)
- $1,000 purchase prize from Haverford College
- $500 gift certificate for printing at Booksmart Studio
- A Wacom Intuos Pro medium tablet
- $200 gift certificate from Digital Silver Imaging
- $200 gift certificate from Shades of Paper
- $100 and $50 gift certificates from Red River Paper
- Two $100 gift certificates from PhotoLounge
- $100, $75, and $50 gift certificates for Think Tank photo bags
- Two $50 gift certificates from PhotoFlasDrive
- A feature on the Laurence Miller Gallery’s Picture of the Week email blast
- A feature on Peter Fetterman’s The Power of Photography email blast
How to Enter
Entry is $40 for up to three images, plus $8 for each additional image. Every entrant receives a copy of the full-color catalogue. Entrants may also subscribe to The Photo Review at a 20% discount ($40/year; higher rates apply outside the US).
All entries are submitted through Smarter Entry. Digital images can be uploaded directly at the link below.
All entries must be received by May 20, 2026.
View the 2026 Contest Rules.
Meet the Juror: Dr. Sarah Kennel
Dr. Sarah Kennel is a specialist in the history of photography who has curated, published, and presented widely on subjects ranging from nineteenth-century French photography and historic photographic processes to European modernism and understudied women photographers.
Her recent projects include A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845; Willie Anne Wright: Artist and Alchemist; Underexposed: Women Artists from the High Museum of Art; and Olivia Parker: Order of Imagination. She has also written on the relationship between painting and photography in nineteenth-century France and completed her dissertation on the intersection of dance and the visual arts in early twentieth-century culture.
Dr. Kennel has previously held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Competition Sponsors
