Earth Photo 2026 winners: From poacher’s handprints to climate displacement

Exhibition at Royal Geographical Society until 24 July

The winners of the 2026 Earth Photo awards are on display at an exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in London until 24 July, with an interactive Summit Photo event running from 17-19 July.

Britta Jaschinski: Tracking the invisible

Britta Jaschinski’s project “Tracking the Invisible” documents the illegal wildlife trade and the forensic science being developed to fight it. One photograph shows a green sea turtle with a human handprint, demonstrating a method to secure evidence against poachers. Another image shows Mark Moseley of London’s Metropolitan Police using a newly developed magnetic powder to detect fingerprints on an elephant tusk confiscated at Heathrow Airport. The technology could help curb a $23bn poaching industry.

Filbert Minja: Traditional healing in Tanzania

Filbert Minja won the David Wolf Kaye Future Potential award for documenting Indigenous herbalists in the Kilimanjaro and Arusha regions of Tanzania. His photographs approach herbalism as a real, everyday practice, not symbolic, and honour knowledge passed down through generations via touch, gesture and close attention to nature.

Natalya Saprunova: Permafrost thaw and mercury in Canada

Natalya Saprunova won the New Scientist Editors award for her long-term project documenting permafrost thaw and coastal erosion in the Inuvialuit territories of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Her photograph of a ringed seal stranded on a sand spit on Banks Island illustrates the impact of rapidly melting sea ice. Thawing permafrost releases sediment carrying mercury into the ocean, with traces found in seal fat, threatening marine life and the health of humans who rely on marine animals for food.

Payal Kakkar: Resistance against coal mining in India

Payal Kakkar received the Royal Geographical Society Climate of Change award for “Lives of Extraction,” which documents the Khairwar Indigenous community’s resistance against coal mining and land dispossession in Singrauli, India’s so-called ‘energy capital.’ Kakkar used mining tailings in the gum oil printing process, so that stains of contamination become part of the image, and then hand-embroidered the prints with green thread. In December 2025, several families, including those photographed, were forcibly relocated by mining company operatives supported by armed forces without resettlement plans.

Marco Garro: Toxic lake in Peru

Marco Garro won the Photoworks Digital Residency award for his long-term investigation into mining at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, one of the world’s most polluted places. He collected mining tailings from former Lake Quiulacocha, now filled with toxic waste, and used them in the photographic development process. The resulting stains echo contamination that has entered local people’s blood, soil and water for generations.

Gideon Mendel: Drowning World

Gideon Mendel was commended in the Moving Image category for his film work documenting communities worldwide living through flooding and climate displacement. His Drowning World series uses precise, unsettling compositions to frame people in flooded homes, with subjects meeting the camera with dignity.

Zillah Bowes and Mohammad Rakibul Hasan: Films on memory and childhood

Zillah Bowes’ film “Here Now There Then” uses animated analogue photographs to explore traumatic memory and the healing effect of proximity to a river. Mohammad Rakibul Hasan’s film “The Vanishing Childhood” follows a teenage boy from flood-prone haor wetlands in Bangladesh whose family is forced to migrate to brickfields, where workers endure grueling conditions.