Athanasios Laoukos of Greece has won the overall prize in the prestigious Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) contest, awarded for a portfolio of images rather than a single frame.
Laoukos documented the Sema ceremony in Turkey and Holy Week processions in Zamora, Spain, showcasing how place, faith, and people intersect. In Turkey, Laoukos captures the whirling dervishes mid-turn. In Zamora, he caught the hooded penitents as they advanced through narrow streets during the centuries-old ritual.
TPOTY/Athanasios Laoukos
The TPOTY competition began in 2003 and has evolved into one of the most respected awards in outdoor photography. Photographers from 160 countries submitted over 20,000 images to a 16-person panel of industry experts. Every finalist had to submit their original RAW files to prove the images were free from manipulation.
Photo: TPOTY/Dashwater Gopalkrishna Bade
Young Travel Photographer of the Year went to 10-year-old Jamie Smart from the UK for his collection of bat photos. He beat entrants from both the 14-and-under and 15-to-18-year-old categories.
Photo: TPOTY/Jamie Smart
Single-image categories
New for 2025 was the Travel Image of the Year award, chosen from the winners of the one-shot categories. The inaugural winner was Dana Allen from the U.S. for her surreal black-and-white close-up of a bull elephant shrouded in dust in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater.
Photo: TPOTY/Dana Allen
The multi-image portfolio categories included Wildlife, Sealife, and Birdlife. Here, Mohammed Murad of Kuwait claimed the top prize with a series showing Arabian desert foxes on the edge of Kuwait City. In one image, their silhouettes stood out against a background of urban lights.
Photo: TPOTY/Mohammad Murad
Mitchel Kanashkevich of Australia won the Culture, Heritage, and Beliefs Portfolio for his images of children studying in the Mauritian mahadras. Paul Sansome of the UK won the Landscape, Weather, and Climate category, while Sara Bardotti from Italy rounded out the portfolio awards with her winning images in the Adventure and Experiences category.
Photo: TPOTY/Kevin Yu Shi
Single-image winners were also selected for each portfolio category. In Wildlife, Sealife, and Birdlife, Kevin Yu Shi from the U.S. captured an extraordinary image of a puma in mid-attack on a guanaco in Chile’s Torres del Paine. Shi later explained that the female puma had been stalking the guanaco to feed her two cubs, but the hunt ultimately failed.
Winner of the one-shot travel portraits category, a scene from Hanoi, Vietnam. Photo: TPOTY/Rahsan Firtina
Photo: TPOTY/Frederico Figueiredo Cerdeira
In Adventure and Experiences, Frederico Figueiredo Cerdeira of Brazil also won with an underwater image of a surfer diving to escape a wave at Fiji’s Cloudbreak Reef. And Laetitia Guichard from France won her category for her eerie image of a plane flying near a long funnel cloud.
Photo: TPOTY/Laetitia Guichard
See the full collection of winning and runner-up images here.
