Sustainability Prize

The Sustainability Prize, launched by Creo and Sony, invites photographers passionate about communicating key themes linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, including environment, accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion, to enter a series into any category of the Professional competition.

Set up to amplify the smaller stories exploring these social and environmental issues, the initiative spotlights one series from the Sony World Photography Awards Professional competition and one short film from the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards.

The Sustainability Prize is in partnership with Creators for the Planet, a global year-round engagement programme set up by Sony Pictures and the United Nations Foundation. Creators for the Planet aims to mobilise and inspire people to act now through photography and film.

Each winner will receive $5,000, Sony Digital Imaging equipment and promotion on both the World Photography Organisation and the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards channels and websites through a news post, interview, newsletter and social media posts.

Congratulations to Tommy Trenchard, an independent photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa, for winning the 2026 Sustainability Prize for The Great Green Wall, a photography series documenting one of the most ambitious environmental projects ever undertaken: Africa’s Great Green Wall, a major initiative that aims to re-green a vast strip of land stretching across the entire continent, in order to fight desertification and boost food security.

The Sony Future Filmmaker Awards Sustainability Prize winner is Mariah Wilson for her short film Bear Guardians. View her film and past winners.