Judges for the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards have been announced

Daniel Brena is a curator and director based in Oaxaca, Mexico.

He leads the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSa) and previously directed the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo. His work explores the intersection of public space and local culture, with several publications on the visual and narrative identity of Oaxaca.

Yumi Goto is an independent curator, editor, researcher, and publisher based in Japan.

She works extensively with emerging and established photographers, collaborating on long-term documentary projects that explore storytelling through photography, with particular attention to conflict, human rights, and questions of gender and social justice.

Zack Hatfield is the managing editor of Aperture magazine. He worked previously as a senior editor of Artforum.

His writing has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, 4Columns, the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and the New York Review of Architecture, and as a freelancer he has worked on various museum catalogues, artist projects, and books.

Paul Ninson is a founder, executive director, scholar, and curator.

He is the visionary behind Africa’s largest photography library, housed within the Dikan Center in Accra, Ghana. Founded in 2022, Dikan is a pioneering non-profit dedicated to shaping the next generation of Africa’s creative leaders through exhibitions, international internships, and the Photojournalism and Documentary Practice Program, where Paul also serves as an instructor.

Bindi Vora is an interdisciplinary artist of Kenyan Indian heritage and senior curator at Autograph, London.

She is interested in how ideas of resistance and resilience are shaped by our surroundings, personal histories and lived experiences. She has curated a number of exhibitions, most recently I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies and Eileen Perrier: A Thousand Small Stories.

Image courtesy of Zöe Maxwell

Monica Allende is a curator, creative director, consultant, and educator with a distinguished international career in contemporary photography and visual storytelling.

She is the Creative Director of The Blue Skies Project, a multidisciplinary collaboration with artist Anton Kusters currently on display at the V&A. Allende is also curating the annual Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House and is working as Creative Director with Laia Abril on a new project exploring women political prisoners.

Image by Mauricio Holc

Ruby Rees-Sheridan is Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery, London, where she works on acquisitions, collection displays and exhibitions, including the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2024 and 2025.

As Curatorial Coordinator at Four Corners Gallery since 2017, she has championed emerging photographers while exploring radical and alternative histories of the medium.

Tess Raimbeau started working as a Photo Editor at Libération in 2015 and is now responsible for the international pages.

She is committed to promoting documentary photography and renewing the aesthetic of Libération, launching major reports abroad and diversifying the roster of reporters working for the newspaper.

Image by Martin Colombet