PERPIGNAN.- Visa pour l’Image has announced the winners of its 2026 awards, with this year’s honors spanning some of the most urgent stories in contemporary photojournalism, from war and displacement in Syria and Gaza to political upheaval in Madagascar, changing forms of intimacy in Japan and social exclusion in France.
The awards are being presented during the 38th edition of the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, which runs from August 29 through September 13. The program encompasses the principal Visa d’or awards as well as grants and prizes supporting emerging photographers, long-term documentary projects and new forms of visual journalism.
One of the major honors, the Gökşin Sipahioğlu by Sipa Press Daily Press Visa d’or Award, went to Dominic Nahr and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung for Nahr’s reporting from Sweida, Syria. Selected from entries submitted by 24 newspapers, the work includes a photograph of a woman and her daughter breaking down inside Sweida National Hospital while searching for missing relatives. The award carries €8,000 in prize money.
Jérôme Gence received the Visa d’or Feature Award for his project on virtual marriages in Japan. One of the featured photographs documents the 2018 wedding of Akihiko Kondo, who is shown leaving a Tokyo chapel carrying a representation of virtual pop star Hatsune Miku as friends and family applaud. The project examines a phenomenon in which technology, popular culture and emotional relationships increasingly overlap. Gence receives the €8,000 prize funded by the Region of Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée.
The Roger Thérond Visa d’or News Award by Paris Match went to Luis Tato of AFP for his coverage of the Gen Z protests in Madagascar. His winning series records the political unrest in Antananarivo, including demonstrators gathering outside City Hall as they celebrate the departure of President Andry Rajoelina. The award is accompanied by €8,000 from Paris Match.
For emerging photojournalism, the Ville de Perpignan Rémi Ochlik Visa d’or Award was presented to Philémon Barbier / Hors Format for his work in Syria. The prize recognizes a young photographer judged to have produced an outstanding published or unpublished report during the previous year. Barbier’s images include a child standing beside a wall scarred by bullets at a camp for internally displaced people in Tabqa, northeastern Syria.
The human consequences of the war in Gaza are at the center of Khames Alrefi’s work, recipient of the ICRC Humanitarian Visa d’or Award. Created to recognize professional photojournalism addressing humanitarian issues arising from armed conflict, the €8,000 award honored Alrefi’s coverage of the Gaza Strip. The selected photograph shows women and children pressing forward at a food distribution point, containers raised as they wait for a meal.
Digital storytelling also figured prominently in the 2026 honors. Daniel Berehulak, Michael D. Shear, Leanne Abraham and Fatima AbdulKarim received the Visa d’or franceinfo Award for the Best Digital News Story for Land Grab: Israel’s Escalating Campaign for Control of the West Bank, published by The New York Times. The investigative project combines photography with reporting, data and interactive mapping to examine settlement activity and violence in the West Bank.
Closer to everyday life in France, Jérémy Lempin won the Visa d’or des Solidarités for The School of Life: Liberty, Equality, Invisibility, a project about illiteracy. His photographs follow people attempting to regain basic reading, writing and mathematics skills and the independence that can come with them. The award, funded with €8,000 by the Département des Pyrénées-Orientales, is being presented for the third time.
A career stretching across decades of modern history was recognized with the Figaro Magazine Lifetime Achievement Visa d’or Award, presented to Raymond Depardon. The €8,000 award honors an established photographer who remains active professionally. The image selected in the winners presentation comes from Beirut in 1978 and depicts a Christian Falangist during the Lebanese Civil War, a reminder of Depardon’s long engagement with conflict, politics and the human condition.
Beyond the principal Visa d’or awards, the 2026 program supports a broad range of photographers and future projects. Meeri Koutaniemi received the Canon Female Photojournalist Grant for a project following Kenyan activist Elizabeth Nkere; Axel Javier Sulzbacher received the Canon Video Grant for a documentary on children and the Guerreros Aztecas militia in Michoacán, Mexico; and Inès Verheyleweghen won the Urban Newcomer Photographer’s Grant sponsored by Google. Other recipients include Guillaume Herbaut, David J Shaw, Adra Pallón, Robin Tutenges, Jonathan Browning, Sarah Caron, Laurence Geai, Laurent Ballesta and Vincent Gouriou.
