iAustralian MuseumDarlinghurst / Sydney CBD
2026 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year
100 award-winning nature photographs from Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea, produced by the South Australian Museum.
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A green sawfish, critically endangered, slides through the milky water of a Pilbara estuary while sea turtles drift around it. Matt Deakin shot it from a drone at last light, and the judges chose it as overall winner from 2,129 entries by 501 photographers in 17 countries.
The 100 shortlisted images fill Hintze Hall on the Upper Ground in ten categories, including a Junior prize won by a 17-year-old. You walk between them with the captions in your ear: the free audio guide reads each photographer's story and the judges' notes. One godwit flies thousands of kilometres to Australia and loses its sandworm to a silver gull. Anyone who has lost a chip to a gull at Manly will side with the godwit.
Entry is free, so it fits easily around a visit to the dinosaurs. Two winners are hard to look at: a koala dead in construction rebar and a Tasmanian devil with facial tumour disease. It runs until 14 February 2027.
Look for
Ethereal Encounter, the overall winner
Look for the ghostly outline of a green sawfish passing through a group of sea turtles in pale Pilbara estuary water, photographed from a drone at last light.
Worm Wars
A bar-tailed godwit pulls a sandworm free on an Albany sandbar while a silver gull closes in; the caption confirms the gull steals it.
Insect Trails
A slow shutter under a Kununurra streetlight turns the flight paths of countless insects into a tangle of rainbow-coloured lines.
Right of Way
A line of royal penguins stops mid-march as an elephant seal bellows at them, their crests blown back; the judges admit it is hard not to laugh.
Alchemy
Tasmania's tanglefoot beech glows gold under UV light, with a faint aurora and airglow in the sky behind the trees.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Going Solo
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You can't face dead or dying animals: two winners show a diseased devil and a koala killed in rebar.
With kids
Entry is free. Two winning images show a Tasmanian devil with facial tumour disease eating a wombat carcass and a juvenile koala dead in construction rebar, so look ahead with young children.
Also at Australian Museum
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- 2026 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the YearImage: Lewis Burnett © Lewis Burnett (Conditional use only for AGNPY)
- Nolan: OriginsCourtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales
- Just Because: CAO YuCourtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile. Photo: Yang Hao
- Dana Claxton: HeaddressCourtesy of Artspace
- Australian Museumwuppertaler / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Hyde Park BarracksJ Bar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Art Gallery of New South WalesBidgee / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5 AU
- National Art School GallerySardaka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
- ArtspaceUser6499 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0