This exhibition shows the results of the 63rd annual World Press Photo Contest. The contest rewards professional photographers for the best pictures - presented as singles or in stories - contributing to the past year of visual journalism.

This year 4,282 photographers from 125 countries entered73,996 photographs to the contest. These visual stories are judged in terms of their accurate, fair, and compelling insights about our world. All entrants accept the code of ethics, and all winning pictures go through a rigorous verification process, ensuring they can be trusted to show the scene witnessed by the photographer. The contest is judged by a jury comprising leading photography professionals, and its membership of the jury changes every year. They are independent of the World Press Photo Foundation, and it is the jury alone that chooses the winning pictures and stories that matter.

#WPPh2020

The World Press Photo Foundation believes in the power of showing and the importance of seeing high-quality visual stories.

It all began in 1955 when a group of Dutch photographers organized an international contest (“World Press Photo”) to expose their work to a global audience. Since then the contest has grown into the world’s most prestigious photography competition, and the worldwide exhibition travels to more than 120 cities in 50 countries, reaching millions of people. Along with our annual festival and the World Press Photo House in Amsterdam, it showcases stories that make people stop, feel, think and act.

We connect the global community of visual journalism and storytelling to a worldwide audience.

For over six decades, the World Press Photo Foundation has been working from its home in Amsterdam as an independent, nonprofit organization. In that time, new developments in media and technology have transformed journalism and storytelling. Our mission has expanded, and we draw on our experience to guide visual journalists, storytellers, and audiences around the world through this challenging and exciting landscape.

Our contests reward the best in visual journalism and digital storytelling. Our Develop programs - including the 6x6 Global Talent Program, the African Photojournalism Database, the Joop Swart Masterclass, the Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative and the West Africa Visual Journalism Fellowship - encourage diverse accounts of the world that present stories with different perspectives. Witness, our online magazine, publishes new talent and new thinking in visual journalism and storytelling.

We support the conditions that make visual journalism and storytelling possible, including the freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, and freedom of the press. The need for images and stories we can trust has never been greater, and the high-quality reports in this exhibition and on our media channels bring you important insights about our world. Sometimes that is done with beautiful photographs and sometimes that requires presenting difficult stories, but they are all accurate and they all matter.

worldpressphoto.org