On 28 October at 17:00, the World Press Photo Exhibition 2026 will open at the Lviv Art Palace.

On display: the winning entries from the 2025 contest, selected by an independent jury – photojournalism and documentary photography from various regions around the world.

Now in its third year, the Odesa Photo Days Festival is presenting these works in Ukraine. The World Press Photo Exhibition 2026 will be held in Lviv for the first time, in partnership with the Culture Strategy Institute and the Lviv Art Palace.

About this year’s contest

A record 57,376 entries were submitted by 3,747 photographers from 141 countries – the highest number of participants in the foundation’s history.

Evgeny Maloletka won the Single Image category for the European region with ‘Russian Attack on Kyiv’: showing a woman next to a destroyed building following the shelling on 24 April 2025, which killed 13 people and left around 90 wounded. The Ukrainian photographer has now become a laureate for the second year running.

Holding the event in Ukraine is made possible thanks to the ongoing support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The foundation itself was established there in 1955 to stimulate change in media, sustain high professional standards and promote the free, unrestricted exchange of information.

About World Press Photo

The World Press Photo Foundation is a global platform connecting photojournalists, documentary photographers and our worldwide audiences through trustworthy storytelling. World Press Photo was founded in 1955 by a group of Dutch photographers who organised a contest to expose their work to an international audience.

The organisation supports photojournalism and documentary photography by holding an annual competition, organising exhibitions, running educational programmes and maintaining an archive. The World Press Photo exhibitions are held every year at over 80 locations worldwide. The World Press Photo Foundation is supported by its strategic partners, the Dutch Postcode Lottery and Fujifilm Corporation.

Partners of the World Press Photo Exhibitions in Ukraine

The Odesa Photo Days Festival initiated and organised the Ukrainian editions in 2023 and 2024, with all events backed by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, alongside VS Print. 

World Press Photo Exhibition 2026 in Lviv is implemented in partnership with the Cultural Strategy Institute and the Lviv Palace of Arts, as part of the “Responsibility to Be” municipal cultural support program.

Cultural Strategy Institute (CSI) is a municipal institution that coordinates the implementation and monitoring of Lviv’s Strategy for Cultural Development (the current Strategy runs through 2035). CSI works to enhance the role of culture in the city by creating policies and tools to implement Lviv’s Cultural Development Strategy, providing analytical support to cultural institutions and initiatives, and fostering the capacity of cultural communities.

Lviv’s municipal program “Responsibility to Be” for 2025–2030 is a cultural support program that builds upon the ideas proposed in Lviv’s bid for the ECoC 2030 title (the concepts of responsible being, and a culture that bears witness, preserves memory, cares, supports, and models the future).

Lviv Art Palace is a cultural and artistic institution with an extensive exhibition infrastructure and a track record of delivering major national and international projects.

Visitor information

Dates: 28 October to 22 November 2026. The opening will take place on 28 October at 17:00.

Address and opening hours

Lviv, 17 Mykola Kopernyk Street
Tuesday–Sunday
12:00–19:00

Tickets

Full-price ticket – UAH 200
Reduced-price ticket – UAH 100

More news on the Odesa Photo Days Facebook and Instagram pages.

This project is made possible with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine. Project reflects its author(s) views and does not necessarily correspond with the position of the Embassy.

Learn more about exhibitions of the World Press Photo 2024 and the World Press Photo 2023.