AFP Honoured at the Istanbul Photo Awards 2026

Olesya Kurpyayeva – 1st Prize – Single Nature & Environment

Scientists perform a necropsy on a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth nicknamed "Yana" at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk on March 27, 2025. The carcass, which was unearthed near the Batagaika research station in the Yakutia permafrost region, weighs 180 kg and measures 120 cm in height and 200 cm in length. Yana’s "geological age"—the period in which she lived—was initially estimated at 50,000 years, but was later revised to "more than 130,000 years" following an analysis of the permafrost layer where she was discovered, according to Maxim Cheprasov, director of the Mammoth Museum at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk.

Tony Karumba – 2nd Prize – Single Nature & Environment

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) rangers guide a young Masai giraffe toward a transport crate during a complex capture and translocation operation at Kedong Ranch in Naivasha, Nakuru County, on November 16, 2025. Long preserved in its wild state, the territory of Kedong Ranch has been resold and divided into plots for real estate projects, preventing animals from grazing or using this ancestral passage corridor between Hell's Gate and Mount Longonot national parks.

Josh Edelson – 1st Prize – Story Nature & Environment - California fire

An extremely violent wildfire in a Los Angeles suburb ravaged buildings and triggered evacuations on January 7, 2026, as high winds swept across the region. Thousands of hectares were in flames: in Pacific Palisades, an upscale neighborhood located between Malibu and Santa Monica, but also on the other side of the city, at the northern edge of Los Angeles, where another fire broke out in Eaton Canyon, near Pasadena.

Ernesto Benavides – 3rd Prize – Story Nature & Environment

Guano, a fertilizer derived from seabird droppings called "wanu" in Quechua, has shaped Peru's history since the 19th century. At that time, the country had approximately 60 million birds, mainly cormorants, Peruvian pelicans, and Peruvian boobies. Today, only 700,000 remain in the entire country. On Santa Island, north of Lima, workers still exploit it under extremely difficult conditions. Between April and November, a small army of 280 seasonal workers uses shovels, pickaxes, or their bare hands to fill bags with a pungent (ammoniacal) but highly fertile mixture of millions of droppings and decomposed bird carcasses.

Luis Tato – 3rd Prize – Story News

In February 2025, the Rwanda-backed M23 armed rebel group launched a lightning offensive and took control of Bukavu, the provincial capital of South Kivu, following clashes with Congolese forces. Looting and heavy artillery fire in certain neighborhoods of the city emptied the streets, overwhelmed morgues and hospitals, and caused mass population displacement.

Omar Al-Qattaa - 2nd Prize – Single Daily Life

Hundreds of Palestinians of all ages gather amidst the rubble for iftar, the meal to break the Ramadan fast, during a truce in the war between Israel and Hamas, in the al-Dahduh neighborhood of the Tal al-Hawa district in Gaza, on March 2, 2025.

The Istanbul Photo Awards is an international news photography contest organised by the Anadolu Agency, which "aims to contribute to the sphere of news photography and offers a perspective shaped by the region’s unique position at the centre of diverse cultures."