Wildlife Photographer of the Year See 2025’s winning snaps

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2025 has been revealed, along with the winners in the competition’s other categories.

South African photographer Wim van den Heever takes the main prize for his shot.

Ghost Town Visitor shows showing a brown hyena visiting the skeletal remains of a long-abandoned diamond mining town in Kolmanskop, Namibia. It took Mr van den Heever a decade to get the single shot of the world’s rarest hyena, which are nocturnal and mainly solitary.

The winning photo was whittled down from a record-breaking 60,636 entries from 113 countries and territories.

All the winning photographs will be showcased in an exhibition at the Natural History Museum from Friday. Find out more here.

Here are the other winners in all categories:

Animals in their Environment

Shane Gross took this photo, called Like an Eel Out Of Water, in D’Arros Island, Amirante, Seychelles. It shows a peppered moray eel very much in its element hunting for carrion at low tide.

Animal Portraits

Shadow Hunter by Italian Philipp Egger shows the orange glint of an eagle owl’s eyes and the evening light falling on its feathers.

Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles

Frolicking Frogs by Frenchman Quentin Martinez shows a gathering of lesser tree frogs in a breeding event in Kaw Mountain, French Guiana.

Behaviour: Birds

Synchronised Fishing by Qingrong Yang is a perfectly timed shot of a ladyfish snatching its prey from right under this little egret’s beak in Yundang Lake, Fujian Province, China.

Behaviour: Invertebrates

This shot in Western Australia by Georgina Steytler, called Mad Hatterpillar, showcases the strange headgear of a gum-leaf skeletoniser caterpillar.

Behaviour: Mammals

Cat Amongst The Flamingos by Dennis Stogsdill shows a caracal hunting a lesser flamingo in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

Oceans: The Bigger Picture

Audun Rikardsen witnesses feeding time around an Atlantic fishing vessel during a polar night in northern Norway in his photo, The Feast.

Natural Artistry

Simone Baumeister shows an orb weaver spider on its web on a pedestrian bridge, silhouetted by lights from the cars below in Ibbenbüren in Germany.

Underwater

Survival Purse by Ralph Pace illuminates the egg case of a swell shark, tethered to the base of a giant kelp, in Monterey Bay, California.

Plants and Fungi

In this photo, called Deadly Allure, Chien Lee uses a UV torch to reveal the fluorescent world of an insect-attracting pitcher plant in the city of Kuching in Malaysia.

Portfolio Award

Alexey Kharitonov, a self-taught photographer, won the Portfolio Award for a number of photos taken during his artistic exploration of remote regions in the Russian North, Siberia, and Asia.

Photojournalist Story Award

In a series of photos, Spanish photographer Javier Aznar González de Rueda explored the complex relationship between humans and rattlesnakes across the US.

This photo, labelled From Venom To Medicine, shows drops of deadly venom dripping into a glass as an eastern diamondback rattlesnake is milked, before the drops are used to produce antivenom that has the potential to treat medical conditions.

Photojournalism

Jon A Juárez won this for documenting ground-breaking science used in Kenya to save the northern white rhino from extinction through in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

This southern white rhino foetus, which did not survive due to an infection, was the result of the first successful rhino embryo transfer into a surrogate mother through IVF. The photo is aptly called How To Save A Species.

Wetlands: The Bigger Picture

German photographer Sebastian Frölich finds a springtail among a galaxy of neon green gas bubbles in Austrian moorlands for this photo, named Vanishing Pond.

Rising Star Award

Luca Lorenz won the award with some of his dark, atmospheric explorations of wildlife in his native Germany.

This one, called Sole Survivor, shows a Eurasian pygmy owl looking out for its chicks after its mate disappeared.

10 Years and Under

Jamie Smart took this photo of an orb weaver spider inside its silken retreat on a cold September morning in mid-Wales, keeping the spider perfectly lit and symmetrically framed as she manually focused her camera. It’s called Caught In The Headlights.

11-14 Years

French youngster Lubin Godin finds himself in mist-shrouded mountains with silhouetted ibex in this photo, called Alpine Dawn.