Hungarian photographer Imre Potyó won the 2026 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year overall title for a macro image of mold on bat guano, marking the first time in the competition’s 26-year history that the top prize went to a Plant and Fungi entry.
Imre Potyó Captures Macro View of Mine Tunnel Ecosystems
Working in restricted-access mine tunnels in the Börzsöny Mountains of Hungary, Potyó spent 13 years documenting bats before securing the top honor.
A key characteristic of the Lesser Horseshoe bat is that during hibernating it occasionally wakes and leaves its roost to hunt flying insects. In doing so, the bat leaves behind droppings that gradually accumulate into a continuous dark layer.
Even within this single frame, bats, fungi and countless microorganisms form part of a web of relationships that quietly sustains life while remaining largely unseen.
Contest judge Tom Gilks noted that the photograph speaks to a larger truth about biodiversity. Gilks serves as the managing director of the Nature Picture Library and pictures editor for BBC Wildlife magazine.
According to contest juror Tom Gilks, the photograph conveys a broader reality concerning the natural world: A vast portion of existence occurs beyond our direct sight, in locations we rarely visit and among creatures we seldom notice.
Szymon Bartołd Wins Youth Category With Deciduous Swan Lake Scene
Among the category winners, now 18-year-old photographer Szymon Bartołd claimed the top prize in the 14-to-17-year Youth Category with an image titled Swan lake, depicting mute swans gliding through glowing orange hues at sunrise with their silhouettes reflected in the water’s surface. Previously, Bartołd’s image won Silver at the Bird Photographer of the Year competition before taking the top youth prize in the GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.
Having previously scouted a lake with a large number of waterbirds, Bartołd returned before dawn the next morning to well hide and watch as mute swans rose majestically from the mist, bathed in golden light. The shot was exposed at 1/6400sec, f/6.3, and ISO 1000 as he pressed the shutter.
Category Winners Across Wildlife and Natural Habitats
The competition also recognized category winners documenting diverse environments, animal behaviors, and human impacts across Europe and beyond. Jan Wieczorek photographed common cranes near Olsztyn in Poland’s Warnia region, explaining in an accompanying note that these birds stay close to the ground, conceal themselves from predators amidst the flora, and travel between feeding grounds and roosting sites via hidden trails running through the reeds. Lorenzo Shoubridge earned the mammals category win for his image titled The cat and a thousand lanterns.
Additional category honors went to Christian Morawitz, who won the Other Animals category with Spider universe, while Imre Potyó secured an Other Animals category runner-up spot with In the moonlight. Fortunato Gatto won the Plants & Fungi category with Forest at the edge, depicting Alaska where the boreal forest and tundra meet and lichens and mosses grow amid small shrubs and sparse trees, while Daniel Böttcher was named Plants & Fungi runner up with Lined up. Florian Lottersberger took the Young Photographers up to 14 years category win with Midnight, and Marla Schwarze won the Winter gold award.
Audun Rikardsen received a highly commended mention in the mammals category for using a motion sensor and an underwater camera setup to document a polar bear waiting at a seal breathing hole on ice. Additional recognized works included Marc Siegle photographing a young red fox family with four cubs living in a nearby barn after spotting them while walking home from school in Switzerland, and Jan Wieczorek noting that cranes walk from roosting sites via secret paths through reed beds at dawn, typically returning via the same route while remaining extremely vigilant.
Further recognized images featured in the competition include William Steel watching dragonflies outside his residence in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, Marco Colombo using an ultraviolet light for nighttime photos off the coast of Sardinia, and Carlyn Kranking detailing seabirds returning to Hornøya in the Barents Sea. Additional entries highlighted a griffon vulture captured at 400mm with a 3.2-second exposure, Spanish percebes harvesters gathering prized seafood delicacies from wave-battered rocks, and an African female black leopard called Giza hunting at night in Laikipia Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya with a red glow from a neighboring jeep’s torch.
