The winners of the 2025 and now 16th Epson International Pano awards have been announced, with the competition attracting an increasing number of entries showing innovative perspectives and interesting and unusual subjects.


‘Last Fireworks’ one of the images from Alessandro Cantarelli’s award-winning portfolio. © Alessandro Cantarelli.

The overall winner of the 2025 Open Photographer of the Year and the Nature/Landscape category is Alessandro Cantarelli from Italy for his entries ‘Last Fireworks’, ‘Jackpot and Mann’. Cantarelli is an Italian fine-art landscape photographer known worldwide for his pioneering work in extreme panoramic landscapes. Describing Last Fireworks Cantarelli said, “As the sun went down, the sky literally exploded. Layer after layer of clouds lit up, painting the desert with fire and gold. Using my Sony A7 IV with a fisheye lens on a tripod, I captured a full multi-exposure sequence at f/8 and ISO 100, rotating carefully around the nodal point to create a seamless 360° panorama.”

In its 16 years, the Epson International Pano Awards has grown and continues to be the largest global competition for panoramic photography. As always, entrants this year competed for thousands of dollars in cash and hardware prizes from main sponsors Epson Australia and Epson Southeast Asia. The winner of The Epson Digital Art Prize 2025 was Daniel Viñé from Spain with a portfolio that included images shot in Vietnam and the US state of Utah, which also took out the RAW Planet Award.

An image taken in coastal Vietnam, from Daniel Viñé’s portfolio, which won the Epson Digital Art Prize 2025. © Daniel Viñé.

This year’s competition saw a prevalence of ultra-wide panoramas, as well as increasingly innovative perspectives using very low angles, very close up subjects, movement and aerial photography. Unusual subjects included abstracts of flower patterns captured by polarised light after hydrolysis and crystallisation and intimate nature vignettes of snails, a beetle and fireflies. There were also far more shots of the Northern Lights than usual coinciding with the 11-year solar cycle maximum.

To view all the winning and top image galleries go to: https://thepanoawards.com/2025-winners-gallery.