About

Giga is pleased to announce the Giga Photo Award 2026, centered on the theme "The Urgency of Connectivity." The award invites photographers from around the world to document how digital connection is lived, relied upon, and sustained in everyday life, particularly in fragile, crisis‑affected, and rapidly changing contexts.

Giga is a joint partnership between UNICEF and ITU to connect every school to the internet and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. As conflict, climate shocks, displacement, and inequality intensify, connectivity has become a critical lifeline for education, health, safety, and participation. Yet millions remain disconnected. The urgency is no longer abstract. It is lived.

The Giga Photo Award builds on this reality by using photography to make visible the human impact of digital access and exclusion. Through single images and extended visual narratives, the award seeks work that moves beyond infrastructure to examine connection as a social condition that shapes resilience, care, learning, belonging, and survival.

Submissions will be accepted via Picter from 17 February to 17 March 2026, across three categories:

Single Image
Junior Visual Storyteller
Multiple Image

Participants may submit personal or professional work responding to the theme, including photographs that show how people and communities adapt, stay connected, or rebuild digital access across distance, disruption, and uncertainty. This includes moments where connectivity influences education, healthcare, emotional well‑being, safety, climate response, civic participation, and mutual aid.

The award will be reviewed by an international jury of leading photographers, editors, and visual practitioners. Jury review will take place in Geneva on 26--27 March 2026, including participation from two student jury in collaboration with HEAD--Genève. Selected works will be exhibited in Geneva in June and October 2026, with Awards Ceremony held in June.

Through this second edition, the Giga Photo Award positions connectivity as a matter of equity and urgency, and photography as a means to document, question, and expand how the world understands what it means to be connected today.

Who can enter

Anyone can enter.

Judges

In collaboration with HEAD-Genève, we will have two student jury members as part of the review.

The five professional judges for the Giga Photo Award 2026 are:

Adeleh Mojtahed, Artist, UN & Strategic Engagement at Giga (ITU)
Ala Kheir, Photographer, Curator & Educator
Samantha Clark, Managing Photo Editor, National Geographic
Tessa Asamoah, Photo Editor, UNHCR
Veejay Villafranca, Visual Journalist

To know more about the jury members, visit https://gigaphotoaward.global and our social media platforms.

Submissions

Submission to the Giga Photo Award 2026 is free. By submitting images to the Giga Photo Award, participants confirm they own the copyright and have the legal right to submit the work. Copyright remains with the photographer.

Participants grant the Giga Photo Award, Giga, and UNICEF permission to use submitted images for award‑related purposes, including exhibitions, publications, communications, promotion, and advocacy. Selected images may also be included in connectivity‑related visual libraries, with full attribution to the photographer.

Winners:

The winners will receive:

Winning images will be showcased in an exhibition in Geneva in June and October 2026. Award recipients will be invited to attend the Awards Ceremony, with travel and accommodation provided.