Eleven finalists for the 2026 Leica Oskar Barnack Award

© Annie Sakkab - Against the backdrop of a swirling sandstorm in the Wadi Rum desert, 71-year-old Mohammad Al Zawaideh of Disi village navigates the increasingly harsh landscape of southern Jordan, a region defined by a stark paradox: It sits atop the massive Disi Aquifer, a 30,000-year-old ‘fossil’ water resource shared with Saudi Arabia, of which only 1% lies within Jordan, yet its people face acute water scarcity and the accelerating impacts of climate change. While this non-renewable sandstone reservoir serves as a strategic lifeline for the nation, supplying 100 million cubic meters of high-quality water annually to Amman via a 325-km pipeline, the local community watches as their water table drops by over 80 cm each year due to heavy extraction and minimal modern recharge.

© David Sladek - People of Sumiac

© Benedikt Renc - Cairo

© Elliot Ross - A 2.4-acre, four-million-gallon private swimming pool with a half-mile shoreline, sits at the center of Desert Color, a new master-planned community in Washington County. One of approximately 2,500 pools in the county, it is fed by the developer’s groundwater wells and ranks among the ten largest freshwater pools in the world. (June 1, 2024 – Washington County, UT)

© Damir Faizulin - Preserving Nature as Preserving Ourselves

© William Keo - FRANCE. Seine-Saint-Denis. 2024. Younes and Sandra.

© Slava Lyu-fa - Inner Distance

© Saher Alghorra - Do not publish without explicit ok from a manager - Clinton *The mother’s name is Naeema Abu Foul. She is 30 years old. She has four children and is pregnant with her fifth.* *** HOLD FOR HUNGER STORY *** NYTCEASEFIRE , July 19, 2025, Gaza City Yazan Abu Foul, a two-year-old child, suffers from severe malnutrition amid deteriorating health conditions. He and his family live in the remains of their destroyed home in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. "PLEASE CHECK WITH GAIA TRIPOLI BEFORE USING"

© Todd Antony- Buzkashi, meaning “goat pulling” in Persian, is the wild, brutal sport of Tajikistan and its neighboring ‘Stans.’ Think polo - but with a headless, eviscerated goat instead of a ball, hundreds of riders, and no formal teams. Rooted in the nomadic cultures of Central Asia and played for hundreds of years, riders battle for control of the goat while dodging rivals (and the occasional whip & elbow) This is 4 year old Abdulqadir, during a quiet hilltop moment with the Buzkashi match still thundering away in the narrow valley below us. We were setting up our flash equipment and taking portraits of some riders from his group of family and friends. Unprompted, he strolled into our makeshift hilltop studio on his biblically large horse. Made to look even larger by Abdul’s diminutive presence on top of him, feet tantalisingly close to actually reaching its stirrups. Yet with the confidence of a Tajik John Wayne, he turned his horse onto the mark I gestured at and posed without direction.