The Overall Winner of the World Sports Photography Awards 2026 was announced a few days ago. And there is no doubt in my mind that Edgar Su’s physics-defying image of tennis ace, Carlos Alcaraz, is the deserved winner (above).
However, I was equally besotted with the other category winners. I’m an avid student of sports photography myself, and I can tell you that the WSPA 2026 judges had their work cut out and then some! Here are my favorite photo finishers from this prestigious sports competition, sponsored by Canon.
First up is Richard Heathcote’s beautiful cricket image of England vs India against a backdrop of Lord’s Pavilion.
The challenge with images that frame large numbers of players is that it can be hard to capture a dynamic image. What I love about this image is that the players are spread evenly throughout the frame and they’re almost all frozen during a moment of action – a rare occurrence indeed.
Here’s a jaw-dropping image of HC Spartak Moscow vs Shanghai Dragons by Sophia Sandurskaya, which topped the Ice Hockey category. The top-down angle and splayed figures instantly reminded me of Neil Leifer’s legendary photograph of Muhammad Ali vs Cleveland Williams.
This image is almost perfectly square-on, while the white ice provides a studio-like quality that really highlights the shapes of the flailing players.
Sports photography is so subject-based that it can be difficult to inject variety into your portfolio. One way of doing this is to find a unique angle – and Aritz Arambarri Goenaga has done just that, by framing a peloton through a derelict factory window, creating multiple frames within frames.
Mwangi Kirubi captured this image of a Ford Puma kicking up a tempest of dust and dirt at a WRC Safari Rally event.
What makes this image so special is that the dust cloud is beautifully formed within the center of the frame and hasn’t been cropped, so we can see the particles of flying debris. Crucially, the rally car is still very much visible when it could have easily been more obscured by the dust cloud.
And finally, I wanted to pick out Anna Zinovieva’s captivating fencing image. I can’t say how the colorful prism effect was created, but it frames the athletes perfectly while introducing additional interest into other areas of the frame. This is a clever way to pull back from a subject while obstructing less-photogenic portions of the frame.
The World Sports Photography Awards is the only global sports awards dedicated exclusively to sports imagery. The 2026 competition received a record-breaking 23,130 images from 4,120 photographers representing 123 countries.
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