More than 24,500 images from 42 countries have been whittled down to the finalists for Abbey Road’s fifth Music Photography Awards — featuring everything from Oasis and Yungblud to Download Festival, punk chaos and My Chemical Romance fans preparing for battle.
The lights drop. The crowd surges. The singer launches into the air, the guitarist throws a shape that would hospitalise an ordinary human and somebody in the photo pit has less than a second to capture it all.
That is the glorious pressure cooker of music photography.
Now, Abbey Road Studios has revealed the finalists for its 2026 Music Photography Awards, delivered by DHL, celebrating the photographers who freeze music’s loudest, strangest and most emotional moments before they disappear forever.
The fifth edition of the global competition attracted more than 24,500 submissions from 42 countries, creating an enormous international snapshot of modern music culture.
Among the artists and events appearing in this year’s finalist images are Oasis, Charli xcx, Florence + The Machine, FKA Twigs, Fontaines D.C., Ho99o9, Yungblud, Kendrick Lamar, Tame Impala, Billy Idol, Lambrini Girls, Warren Ellis, Sombr, Billie Marten, Amyl and the Sniffers, Geese and our own beloved field of beautiful Donington chaos, Download Festival.
That’s some serious shutter-button mileage, mun.
🎸 Celebrating the People Behind the Lens
Music photographers are often wedged against barriers, crouched beside monitor stacks and attempting to create art while security guards, microphone stands and enthusiastic crowd-surfers repeatedly enter the frame.
The best images make all that chaos look effortless.
Abbey Road’s Music Photography Awards were launched in 2022 to recognise the craft and cultural importance of the people behind those images. They now sit at the heart of the studio’s wider Music Photography Accelerator, which includes exhibitions, workshops, mentoring, learning resources and professional opportunities.
This year’s judging panel was led by photographer and MPA co-founder Rankin, alongside Nile Rodgers, RAYE, Damiano David, Platon, Dean Chalkley, Dennis Morris, Kid Harpoon, Lily Fontaine, Phoebe Fox, Jackie Lee Young, Hikaru Utada and Simon Wheatley.
The judges reduced the shortlisted work to five finalists in each open category. The Judges’ Choice category contains seven finalists selected directly by the panel.
The winners will be announced at Abbey Road Studios on Thursday 24 September 2026.
🗳️ Music Moment of the Year — The Public Decides
The Music Moment of the Year, supported by Outernet London, is the only category decided by a public vote.
Its five finalists capture moments that helped define music in 2025:
- Harriet T K Bols — Oasis: Liam and Noel Gallagher sharing a quiet moment before embracing at the band’s penultimate Wembley show.
- Jenn Devereaux — Kendrick Lamar: Kendrick taking centre stage during the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show, surrounded by performers forming the American flag.
- Jessie Morgan — Lambrini Girls: Phoebe Lunny launching herself from a speaker stack and landing in the crowd below.
- Joshua Halling — Oasis: A fan swallowed by a swirling crowd during the Live ’25 show in Buenos Aires, captured from high in the stadium on a 300mm lens.
- Jack Oliver — Charli xcx: Charli burning the brat flag at Glastonbury, signalling the end of an era.
The images could hardly be more different. There is Gallagher tenderness, stadium spectacle, punk-rock blind faith, crowd madness and a pop-cultural funeral conducted with an actual burning flag.
In other words, music in 2025 summed up in five brilliantly chaotic frames.
Voting is open until 11.59pm UK time on Monday 14 September 2026 through the official Abbey Road Music Photography Awards website.
The images are also being shown in a free digital exhibition at Outernet London’s Now Arcade from 8 to 14 September, where visitors can vote on-screen.
🎭 Portrait Finalists
The Portrait category moves away from the roar of the stage and looks directly at the personality, identity and presence of the artist.
- Frances Carter — Billie Marten
- Jamie-Lee Culver — Aynjel
- Wanda Martin — Billy Idol
- Daniel Rojas — The OGM of Ho99o9
- Manuel Vazquez — Warren Ellis
The selected images include Billie Marten photographed on horseback during her first visit to New Zealand, Billy Idol at Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont and Warren Ellis posing alongside his dogs, Piglet and Larry.
That last one already sounds like it deserves several trophies and a packet of dog biscuits.
🎪 Festivals — Supported by DHL
Now we’re talking: enormous stages, unpredictable weather, wild crowds and photographers trying to protect several thousand pounds of equipment from airborne lager.
The Festivals finalists are:
- Viktória Erdős — Palaye Royale in Budapest
- Danny North — Download Festival: Humans of Download
- Giulia Spadafora — Glastonbury Festival audience
- Ian Zandi — The Killing Floors at Echo Park Rising
- Jake Zaoutis — Hey, Nothing at Shaky Knees Festival
Danny North’s Humans of Download entry will immediately grab the attention of anyone who has made the annual pilgrimage to Donington.
Festival photography isn’t only about the people standing onstage. The fans, outfits, friendships, weather disasters and campsite creatures are every bit as important to the story.
Anyone who has walked around Download with a camera knows the site contains enough incredible characters to fill an entire gallery — and probably several police line-ups.
🌱 Emerging Photographer of the Year
This category celebrates photographers at the beginning of their professional journeys, proving that a powerful creative voice matters far more than having the most expensive camera in the pit.
- Frances Carter — Gin Wigmore
- Bryce Glenn — Sombr
- Natalia Peralta — Nicholas y los fumadores
- Dara Petrova — Techno rave Laboratorium
- Isaac Wheatley — Mikael
Dara Petrova’s photograph documents the Laboratorium techno rave in Ukraine, described as a place where military personnel can socialise and civilians find temporary release from the pressure surrounding them.
It is a reminder that music spaces can become far more than entertainment. They can offer connection, escape and something resembling normality when the world outside feels anything but normal.
🎤 Live Music Finalists
The Live Music category is where timing, instinct and controlled panic collide.
- Charlie Barclay Harris — Fontaines D.C.
- Rhys Bennett — Battlesnake at Download Festival
- Lewis Evans — Liam Gallagher during an Oasis show
- Tom Pallant — Yungblud with bassist Silke Blansjaar
- Rico Suhr — Dr.VENUS at Tokyo’s UFO Club
Rico Suhr becomes the first Japanese photographer to reach the MPA finals, while Rhys Bennett brings more Donington fire to the shortlist with Australian theatrical metal maniacs Battlesnake.
Tom Pallant’s image catches Yungblud and Silke Blansjaar engulfed in fog during a performance in Luxembourg.
That is the classic live-photography challenge: terrible visibility for everyone else, absolute gold for the person holding the camera.
🕶️ Behind the Scenes
Some of music’s most revealing moments happen away from the stage, after the volume fades and the public mask slips.
- Olly Bromidge — Matt Molotov backstage in Madrid
- Sophie Buckley — Black Honey on the set of “Insulin”
- Lewis Evans — Geese inside their New York studio space
- Caity Krone — Kevin Parker of Tame Impala
- Gabrielle Ravet — My Chemical Romance fans
Gabrielle Ravet’s photograph captures My Chemical Romance fans preparing for the opening show of the Long Live The Black Parade Tour in Seattle.
That choice brilliantly widens the meaning of “behind the scenes”. The transformation before a gig doesn’t only happen in dressing rooms.
Fans have their own rituals involving make-up, outfits, friendship bracelets, eyeliner sharp enough to cut glass and the occasional emergency safety pin.
🧨 Underground Scenes
This category celebrates grassroots movements, alternative communities and the places where music develops before the wider world catches up.
- AF Cortes — Audience at a secret KARTEL show in Brooklyn
- Andrea Gonar — Ruido en casa
- Geoffrey Nicholson — Spunk
- Suzanne Phoenix — Private Function at Gold Street
- James Streiker — Rosanna
Suzanne Phoenix documented Australian punk band Private Function at the final Gold Street party before the location was demolished, while AF Cortes captured a secret show held on abandoned railway tracks in Brooklyn.
These aren’t spotless arena images created beneath perfectly programmed lighting. They are records of communities, temporary spaces and beautifully unruly moments that might otherwise vanish without evidence.
Grassroots photography matters because scenes rarely realise they are making history while it is happening.
Usually, everyone is too busy avoiding the collapsing ceiling.
🧷 Guest Category: 50 Years of Punk
The 2026 guest category marks 50 years of punk, celebrating the movement that tore up music, fashion and youth culture before safety-pinning the pieces back together.
Unlike the other open categories, photographs from any year could be entered.
- Joe Hughes — Sonic Youth
- Wayne Large — Members of various punk bands
- Keith Marlowe — The Black Halos
- Gerard McNamara — Bauhaus and Peter Murphy
- Jamie Wdziekonski — Amyl and the Sniffers
From Bauhaus and Sonic Youth to the modern fury of Amyl and the Sniffers, the finalists show that punk has never been one haircut, one city or one brief explosion in the 1970s.
It is attitude, resistance, community and the absolute refusal to ask permission before making a racket.
🏆 Judges’ Choice Finalists
Chosen directly by the 2026 judging panel, Judges’ Choice recognises images with exceptional creativity, impact and storytelling.
- Matt Auger — Substandards
- Carlos Avendano — Lisa Alvarado
- Scarlett Carlos Clarke — Self Esteem
- Autumn de Wilde — Florence + The Machine
- Angus Jenner — Oasis
- Sacha Lecca — FKA Twigs
- Tom Pallant — Yungblud
The selection includes the cover images for Self Esteem’s A Complicated Woman, Florence + The Machine’s Everybody Scream and Yungblud’s Idols, alongside Angus Jenner’s photograph from the opening night of the Oasis Live ’25 Tour.
👑 Roberta Bayley Receives the ICON Award
The 2026 ICON Award will go to Roberta Bayley, whose photographs helped define the visual language of New York punk.
After working the door at CBGB, Bayley began photographing the musicians passing through the legendary club and later became chief photographer for Punk Magazine.
Her archive includes defining images of The Ramones, Debbie Harry and Blondie, Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, Squeeze, X-Ray Spex and the reunited New York Dolls.
Most famously, Bayley photographed the cover of The Ramones’ self-titled 1976 debut — four musicians against a brick wall creating an image almost as instantly recognisable as the songs.
⚡ Masayoshi Sukita Honoured for Lifetime Achievement
Legendary Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Sukita is best known for his 44-year creative relationship with David Bowie and for shooting the unforgettable cover of Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes”.
His remarkable career also includes era-defining images of Iggy Pop, Marc Bolan, Joe Strummer, Yellow Magic Orchestra and David Sylvian.
Sukita didn’t simply photograph famous musicians. His work helped shape how generations would remember them.
📅 What Happens Next?
The winners will be unveiled during the official Abbey Road Music Photography Awards ceremony on Thursday 24 September 2026.
Before then, fans can vote for the Music Moment of the Year until 11.59pm on 14 September.
Essential Information
- Awards: Abbey Road Music Photography Awards 2026
- Edition: Fifth
- Entries received: More than 24,500
- Countries represented: 42
- Public vote: Music Moment of the Year
- Voting deadline: 14 September 2026 at 11.59pm UK time
- Outernet exhibition: 8–14 September 2026
- Awards ceremony: 24 September 2026
- Location: Abbey Road Studios, London
- ICON recipient: Roberta Bayley
- Lifetime Achievement recipient: Masayoshi Sukita
📸 The Riff Report Verdict
Music photography is sometimes treated as decoration around the “real” story.
That completely misses the point.
The right photograph can become inseparable from the music. It can define an album, preserve a vanished venue, introduce the world to a new artist or capture a split-second connection between band and crowd that nobody else in the room even noticed.
These finalists have documented everything from the enormous cultural force of Oasis and Kendrick Lamar to secret railway-track gigs, Ukrainian raves, festival crowds and a quiet moment of solitude for Kevin Parker.
That range is precisely what makes music photography so bloody exciting.
Sometimes it is history unfolding in front of 80,000 people. Sometimes it is five mates making noise in a room with questionable wiring. Both deserve somebody behind the lens.
To every photographer who has ever sprinted through a festival field, battled red stage lighting, protected a camera from flying beer or heard the dreaded words “first three songs, no flash” — this one’s for you.
The riffs disappear into the night. The photographs make sure the moment lives forever. Proper magic, mun. 📸🤘🔥
