More than a Picture

A grandmother reading to her granddaughter for the first time in years. Children playing in the schoolyard. A community health worker fitting a farmer with his first pair of glasses, right there in the field. These are the kinds of images the World Sight Day Photo Competition has spent a decade collecting, and its eleventh edition, now open, is asking for more of them.

The competition sits alongside Every Story Counts as a second arm of the same advocacy effort, doing similar work in a different medium. A written story asks a reader to imagine a moment; a photograph puts them inside it immediately.

Photographs submitted do not stop at the competition. Entries have a second life in advocacy briefings, social campaigns, and presentations to the very decision-makers the Elevate pillar is trying to reach — a single striking image, placed in front of a minister or delegate, can do in one glance what several pages of a briefing document take much longer to establish.

This year the images will be weighed by a panel that reflects the competition’s own reach, across eye health, photography, media and advocacy. Leading it is HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh, IAPB Global Ambassador, joining the panel for the first time to mark the year of the inaugural Global Summit for Eye Health. She is joined by optometrist and medical advisor Dr Jennifer Tsai, award-winning photographer John Boatz, documentary photographer Marijn Fidder, a former Photo of the Year winner, now on the other side of the lens, and Michelle Sylvanowicz of Bayer Consumer Care, a large supporter of the photo competition. Between them they bring the clinical eye, the photographic one, and the advocate’s sense of which images move decision-makers to act.

This year’s categories call for the ordinary moments clear vision makes possible: reading, cooking, crossing a street safely. Love Your Child’s Eyes looks for children thriving because their eyesight was corrected in time. Love Your Eyes at Work documents eye protection on the job, from safety goggles on a construction site to a routine screening in an office. Love Health for All turns the lens on the people delivering care, from opticians and ophthalmologists to community health workers. And Making the World See the Value of Vision is looking for submissions that showcase what good eyesight makes possible in education, independence, and everyday dignity.

Submissions are open now and close on 18 November 2026, giving photographers the weeks around World Sight Day on 8 October to capture photos. Winners will be announced on 10 December 2026, Human Rights Day, a deliberate choice that frames clear vision not as a luxury but as a right, and one that lands just two days before Universal Health Coverage Day on 12 December. Together those dates carry the campaign’s central message, that eye care belongs within health for all, reaching the child whose sight was corrected in time, the worker protected on the job, and the community health worker making sure no one is left behind. This is the 11th year of the competition, and 2026 marks a milestone worth entering for, the first-ever Global Summit for Eye Health, held in November, puts vision on the global health agenda as never before.

Entry is open to photographers worldwide, amateur and professionals are invited to enter as many images as they like.

Enter today.

See past winners.