2025 ILPOTY Awards - The Results!

To see the flipbook with the Top 101 entries, see the bottom of this article. To see the Top 202+, click on the Archive link above and select 2025 Top 202+ Entries.

For the past 12 years, we've been putting together an authoritative book full of amazing landscape photographs. There's no doubt that each of the 101 photographs in each of the 12 books is a masterpiece, a study in the art and craft of landscape photography, but we should also spare a thought for the hundreds of images that we couldn't include in the books.

Photography is subjective. While there are preferences and popular styles, there really is no right or wrong – these are not useful words for photographers or for artists. So as we present the Top 101 landscape photographs for 2025, we'd like also to acknowledge the amazing work that we didn't publish - and recognise another 100 or so that were literally one point away - see our Top 202+ on this website!

And just as making the Top 101 includes a hint of subjectivity (our judges are human after all), so taking out one of our 11 cash prizes inevitably has a hint of bias and preference. In most of our categories, the five judges had five different opinions. It's only when we consider second, third and sometime fifth preferences we can place one photograph ahead of another. In some ways, it's not fair; in others, it's very exciting.

And this is why our Award applauds not just the 11 prize winners, but the Top 101 photographs. We'd like to applaud many more and I'm sure all the photographers published in our books would agree that there is a wealth of beautiful landscape photography out there. Within these pages is just a small selection. 

So, enough of the preamble - who won? Congratulations to J. Fritz Rumpf from the USA, our International Landscape Photographer of the Year for 2025.

We received 3601 entries and the threshold for inclusion in the book (a Top 101 entry) was a score of 86.6%. And as we have done in previous years, we've included an online listing of the next 101 top scoring photographs (our Top 202+). Congratulations to all these photographers. 



There is a US $12,500 cash purse for the best Photograph of the Year (single shot, 1st, 2nd, 3rd), the best Photographer of the Year (portfolio of four photographs, 1st, 2nd, 3rd), and five special subject awards. All 11 winners also receive a physical (printed) copy of the annual Awards book. 

The 2025 winners are:

Photographer of the Year: J. Fritz Rumpf, USA
Second Place: Karol Nienartowicz, Poland
Third Place: Joyce Bealer, USA

Photograph of the Year: Lukas Trixl, Austria
Second Place: Albert Dros, The Netherlands
Third Place: Dave Drost, USA

Special Award Winners
Torsten Pull, UK (Black and White)
Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove, Iceland (Seascape)
Kung-Fu Li, Taiwan (Snow and Ice)
Dennis Hualong Zhang, Armenia (Stormy Sky)
Benjamin Barakat, Switzerland (Lone Tree)

Thanks of course to our judging team: David Burnett, Jim M. Goldstein, Kaye Davis, Tim Parkin and last year's winner, Andrew Mielzynski.

On behalf of David Evans, my co-convenor, we hope you enjoy the best landscape photographs in the world from 2025.

(NB Entrants will receive an email outlining their results, or they can log into their account and review their results in the entry area.)

Peter Eastway
Chairman of Judges
International Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards