Presenting the stories that matter in a conflicted world

It is the 64th edition of the contest involving professional photographers, who can present their entries either as a single photo or as a series telling a story. Some 150 examples are on display at the Hungarian National Museum, which is hosting the exhibiton for the fourth time, after its previous tenure at Budapest’s Ethnographic Museum.

There is always a large entry for the prestigious exhibition, and this year 4315 photographers from 130 countries entered 74,470 photographs for judging by an international jury comprising leading photography professionals. The membership of the jury is changed each year and the jurists are independent of the World Press Photo Foundation, which organises the annual contest.

The jury alone chooses the winning pictures and stories that matter, examining the entries for their accurate, fair and compelling insights about the world. All entrants accept the code of ethics, and all winning pictures go through a rigorous verification process, ensuring they can be trusted to show the scene witnessed by the photographer.

The World Press Photo event began in 1955 when a group of Dutch photographers organised an international contest to expose their work to a global audience. Since then the contest has grown into the world’s most prestigious photography competition, and the worldwide exhibition travels to more than 120 cities in 50 countries, reaching millions of people. It aims to showcase stories that make people stop, feel, think and act.

The World Press Photo Foundation works from its home in Amsterdam as an independent, nonprofit organisation. The annual exhibition premieres each year in Amsterdam in April, before beginning its worldwide tour. The foundation works with local and international exhibition partners to reach a global audience of four million-plus people each year.

This year’s World Press Photo overall winner was taken by Mads Nissen and shows Rosa Luzia Lunardi, 85, being embraced by nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza at Viva Bem care home in São Paulo, Brazil, on August 5, 2020.