The World Press Photo Foundation is introducing three major new awards for the 2019 contests, with an emphasis on storytelling.

The new awards are the ‘World Press Photo Story of the Year’ in the Photo Contest, and for the Digital Storytelling Contest, the ‘World Press Photo Interactive of the Year’ and the ‘World Press Photo Online Video of the Year’. The winners of these four headline awards will receive €10,000 each. This means all contest winners will share in prizes totalling more than €130,000 in value.

The new award for the World Press Photo Story of the Year will honour the photographer whose visual creativity and skills produced a story with excellent editing and sequencing that captures or represents an event or issue of great journalistic importance that year. On 20 February 2019, the six nominees for Photo of the Year, and three nominees for Story of the Year will be announced. The winners will be announced at the Awards Show on 11 April 2019.
There are two other significant changes to the categories for the 2019 Photo Contest:

  • the former People category is now called Portraits
  • the acceptance of portfolios to the Sports category is being emphasized by adding it to the category’s definition

In response to developments in the media and technology, the 2019 Digital Storytelling Contest will adopt a more flexible approach to awards in the Interactive category. The jury will decide which productions stand out and then determine which “Best of” awards to make, such as Best VR, Best use of AI, Best Webdoc, or other inspiring formats.  On 20 February 2019, the three nominees for Interactive of the Year and the three nominees for Online Video of the Year will be announced. The winners will be announced in April 2019. Read the full description of the awards and categories here.

The 62nd annual World Press Photo Contest will open for submissions on 3 December 2018. Entrants will need to register by 3 January 2019 (12 noon CET) and submit their entries by 8 January 2019 (12 noon CET). Find out more about the 2019 Photo Contest

The 9th annual World Press Photo Digital Storytelling Contest will open for submissions on 3 December 2018. Entrants will need to submit their entries by 8 January 2019 (12 noon CET). Find out more about the 2019 Digital Storytelling Contest