ELIGIBILITY:

This Photography Competition is organised by The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge (known simply as ‘The Royal Society‘) of 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG, registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales under number 207043.

The opening date for entries is 00:00:01am (BST) on Monday, 1 June 2026. The closing date of the Competition is 23:59:59pm (BST) on Friday, 14 August 2026. Entries received outside this time will not be accepted.

All entries must be submitted via the Competition submission website: https://portal.royalsociety.org/photo-competition/

The Photography Competition is free to enter, and no purchase is necessary.

The Royal Society will not accept the following:
(a) responsibility for entries that are lost, mislaid, damaged or delayed in transit, regardless of cause, including, for example, as a result of any equipment failure, technical malfunction, systems, satellite, network, server, computer hardware or software failure of any kind; or
(b) proof of transmission as proof of receipt of entry to the Photography Competition.

By submitting an entry, you are agreeing to be bound by these terms and conditions. A copy of these terms and conditions is available on our website: https://royalsociety.org/journals/publishing-activities/photo-competition/terms-conditions/. If you have any questions, please contact Imagecomp@royalsociety.org.

The Royal Society reserves the right to refuse entry or refuse to award the prize to anyone in breach of these terms and conditions.

The Photography Competition is open to anyone studying or working in science at the graduate level or above, except employees of the Royal Society, their families, agents or any third party directly associated with the administration of the prize draw.

No more than 20 entries per person are permitted, and each entry may only be submitted to one category.

Photographs must not have been taken more than five years prior to the competition opening date of Monday 1 June 2026.

Entries must not have been selected as a winner in any other competition prior to the opening date of Monday 1 June 2026.

By entering the Photography Competition, you confirm that you are eligible to do so and eligible to claim any prize you may win. The Royal Society may require you to provide proof that you are eligible to enter the Photography Competition.

The Royal Society reserves all rights to disqualify you if your conduct is contrary to the spirit or intention of the Photography Competition.

Entries should be no larger than 10MB and be at least 300dpi and should be submitted as either JPEG or TIFF files with no watermarks, signatures or borders included.

Entries must be accompanied by a minimum 150 word description of the scientific phenomena shown, with information that could include, but is not limited to: location, species, behaviour and scientific context. A further description should be provided of how the shot was achieved technically, including any post-processing.

BENEFIT:

The overall winner receives a prize of £1,000 (or currency equivalent).

Winners of the categories not chosen as the overall winner receive £500 (or currency equivalent).

The overall winner is featured on the cover of a Royal Society journal and receives a full Article Processing Charge (APC) waiver on their next open access publication in our journal portfolio.

The final shortlist selected by the judges is displayed in an online exhibition. The Royal Photographic Society provides certificates and 1-year Royal Photographic Society Memberships to the category winners, with a request that the recipients blog or social post about their award.