10 winning photos from the World Food Photography Awards 2026

From a Soviet-era sanatorium to a floating market in Bangladesh, this year's World Food Photography Awards capture the many ways food shapes daily life around the world.

The 2026 competition, sponsored by Tenderstem® Bimi® Broccolini, drew nearly 9,000 entries from more than 50 countries, immortalising harvests, markets, family kitchens, street food, celebrations and survival. With just one click, food photographers around the world created a global portrait of food culture, showing not just what people eat, but how food is woven into everyday life.

Here are some of this year's most striking winning images.

British photographer Jo Kearney's winning shot captured a solitary moment in the canteen of a Soviet-era sanatorium in Tajikistan – a reminder that food photography can be as much about evoking memory and place as it is about whetting appetite. At Khoja Obi Garm in the mountains of Tajikistan, guests still gather for simple, hearty meals between prescribed treatments. Built on radon-rich hot springs, the vast concrete "health hotel" once offered workers two weeks of annual rest. Today, its low cost continues to draw local Tajiks, visitors from neighbouring Central Asian countries and the occasional backpacker.

At a hotpot festival in China, hundreds of diners gather around a vast communal banquet. The red broth, rich with chilli, Sichuan peppercorn, fermented bean paste, beef tallow and spices, becomes both meal and spectacle as guests eat, film and livestream the feast.

In Ine, a fishing village in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, squid dries in the sun using the traditional technique of himono. The preservation method, used for fish and seafood, draws flavour from salt, air and time, linking the village's food traditions to the sea that sustains it.

At sunrise beneath Kolkata's Howrah Bridge, a small crew hauls in nets from the Hooghly River. Their catch will be sold in nearby markets and cooked that same morning in Bengali homes. The image captures a quiet harvest taking place beneath one of the city's busiest crossings.

In Kyoto's Nishiki Market, a fleeting moment is captured through the crush of shoppers, steam, heat and movement. Known as "Kyoto's kitchen", the market has long been one of the city's great food thoroughfares, where street snacks, pickles, seafood and sweets are packed into narrow lanes. This image catches the intensity of the market at its busiest.

Inside an underground wine tank, a worker cleans away the traces of the previous vintage with pressurised water. After the walls and floor are washed, his partner lowers a small bucket with a sponge inside to collect what remains in the lowest corner. The image reveals the hidden labour behind winemaking that is far from the romance of the glass.

In Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a child reaches towards hot non bread fresh from the family tandoor. Dense and round with a thick chewy crust, always marked at the centre with black sesame seeds, Samarkand non is one of the city's defining foods.

During Chhath Puja in West Bengal, India, devotees stand in water holding food offerings to Surya, the Sun god. The festival, observed largely by women, is rooted in gratitude, purification and devotion.

In Bogra, Bangladesh, a vegetable market comes to life in the early morning. Farmers bring their freshly harvested cabbages by rickshaw van before traders buy the produce and send it on to Dhaka and other major cities.

Hungarian photographer Lehóczki Balázs had imagined this portrait of his grandparents for years but felt unworthy of capturing them. His grandmother went to the hairdresser and his grandfather shaved before he set up his studio equipment in their kitchen. When she saw the finished image, his grandmother called him an artist.

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