From 27,846 entries from 144 countries, the jury of the Global Peace Photo Award selected the work “The Cut” by the Italian photographer Silvia Alessi as the Peace Image of the Year 2026.
24 September 2026, Vienna City Hall. This evening, the winners of the international Global Peace Photo Award photography competition were presented with the Alfred Fried Peace Medal for the fourteenth time.
The award gala took place at the invitation of the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig – who was represented by Alexandra Rezaei, a member of the City Council and the Vienna Provincial Parliament – in the Wappensaal of Vienna City Hall, which was filled to capacity.
The winners of the Global Peace Photo Awards 2026
Children’s category:
Sesilia Shainidze from Georgia for „My Family“
Single Image Category:
Silvia Alessi from Italy for „The Cut”
Photo Series:
Antonio Denti from Italy for „Il Mare in Mezzo (The Sea In Between)“
Aleksandra Kossowska from Poland for „The World by Touch“
Mahmoud Abu Hamda from Palestine for „Wings of Childhood and Peace“
In her welcome address, Alexandra Rezaei, who opened the evening on behalf of the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig, emphasised how important it is to provide a forum for peace in these times. “Peaceful dialogue is particularly needed in a world characterised by conflicts and differing perspectives. Everyone can contribute to a more peaceful coexistence – through respect, a willingness to help and mutual consideration. The foundations for this are not laid solely between states, but in our everyday lives, starting within our families. Only liberal democracies, which are able to respond clearly to differing viewpoints without marginalising them, can provide the framework for this. The Global Peace Photo Award honours photographers whose images demonstrate how this can be achieved.”
Peace Image of the Year 2026
The main prize, the “Peace Image of the Year 2026”, worth 6,000 euros, went to the Italian photographer Silvia Alessi for her image “The Cut”
In a single photograph, the Italian photographer Silvia Alessi has captured the rebellion against the oppression of women, a moment of liberation and the longing to be at peace with life. These are women who have fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, each of whom is here defiantly and confidently holding a hairdryer aloft.
Amongst many other things, the radical Islamist and ultra-reactionary Taliban, who have been in power in Afghanistan since August 2021, have also banned beauty salons for women. What was once one of the few professions in which Afghan women could still work is now illegal, like so many other things for women. Even though their hair must be concealed beneath headscarves anyway.
What has been eradicated in Afghanistan – what cannot be practised or learnt there – young women who have fled are now mastering in Pakistan. In classrooms equipped with mirrors, hairdressing tools and mannequins. Every hairdryer is a weapon in the struggle for self-determination, identity and visibility, for participation and the right to choose a profession.
This is how jury member Peter-Matthias Gaede summed up the merits of Silvia Alessi’s work in his laudatory speech.
Silvia Alessi was also honoured in the ‘Best Single Image’ category. The prize money of €1,000 was provided by the Austrian Photographische Gesellschaft (Photographic Society, PHG), the second-oldest photographic society in the world.
The Children’s Peace Image of the Year 2026
The prize for the best peace image in the children’s and youth category, “The Children’s Peace Image of the Year 2026”, worth 1,000 euros, was won by 11-year-old Sesilia Shainadze from Georgia with his image “My Family”.
The award-winning photograph shows a scene at her grandmother’s house, where Sesilia has set up a stage set with her grandmother, her uncle, aunt, cousins and her dog – an idea entirely of her own. She loves the fact that there’s always so much going on at her grandmother’s – it’s cheerful and colourful.
Peace, after all, is not merely the absence of war; it begins where families come together in warmth, love, care and happiness. For Sesilia, this is her current vision of a peaceful world.
Sesilia lives in the port city of Batumi on the Georgian Black Sea coast, where she is in Year 5 at the ‘Masterclass’ Lyceum, a state educational institution with high standards in foreign language learning and in the teaching of democratic values and environmental responsibility.
The two main prizes were presented by Sonja Raus, Executive Director of the Vienna Insurance Group (VIG), which has supported the Global Peace Photo Award as its main sponsor for many years: “Peace is an essential prerequisite for a future worth living. As an international insurance group that connects people across national borders, a peaceful and stable environment is of particular importance to us. That is why the Vienna Insurance Group has been committed to the Global Peace Photo Award for many years. We have supported the Children’s Peace Photo competition since its inception, and since 2022 we have been the main sponsor of the entire award.”
At the presentation of the 2026 Peace Prize, Sonja Raus was supported by Silvia Lammerhuber, managing director and owner of Edition Lammerhuber, who has also been a long-standing sponsor of the award.
Lois Lammerhuber, who initiated the Global Peace Photo Award together with his wife Silvia Lammerhuber and has organised it since the very beginning, reminded us that “peace is not the absence of war, but something I would describe as a ‘life well lived’. With all their creative and artistic passion, the photographers compose an ode to respect for the fragility of our world. They invoke the relationships between people and nature as a mission for a responsible life. With their talents, their vision and their perspectives, they depict the social and ecological challenges that must no longer be ignored. They captivate the eye with photographs that take root in the heart the moment they are seen, and encourage us to resist indifference and the prevailing populism. An appeal to the world that is firmly inscribed in the heart of our award.”
Christoph Jünger, Executive Director of UNICEF Austria, emphasised in his speech: “Children and young people often experience the effects of conflicts, crises and social tensions particularly directly. This makes it all the more important to give them the space to express their view of the world. The entries for the Children’s Peace Image of the Year impressively demonstrate how young people understand, experience and shape peace. Their images remind us that peace is not just the absence of war, but also security, cohesion, respect and the opportunity to develop freely. UNICEF Austria is proud to support this powerful statement for the voices of young people as a partner.”
The other Alfred Fried Peace Medals 2026, each accompanied by prize money of €1,000, were awarded to:
Antonio Denti, Italy: “Il Mare in Mezzo (The Sea In Between)”
Making peace with the sea, which many of them associate with traumatic memories. That is the aim of an initiative near Rome, where female migrants from Africa, together with their children born in Italy, are encouraged to overcome their fear of water. For them, the Mediterranean was a life-threatening element when they had to cross it in flimsy boats – a sort of second desert following their journey through the North African drought. And all too often, a deadly barrier between their homeland and their dream destination in Europe.
For Denti, born in Catania, Sicily, in 1972, it is a modern odyssey, one he witnessed during their adventurous journey across the sea. Yet it is an epic without a poet – pure reality. Denti initially studied anthropology at the University of London, delving into the science of human coexistence before he began observing this life through his camera. Or rather: taking part in it directly. He worked for the Reuters news agency in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Gaza.
Aleksandra Kossowska, Poland: “The World by Touch”
Growing up in a world that is invisible from the very beginning. Understanding the world through touch, sounds, textures, smells—and no light anywhere. Even the Polish photographer Aleksandra Kossowska was unable to capture blindness in images. The star-like clouds she has added to the black-and-white photographs of blind or severely visually impaired children at a school in Sebeta, Ethiopia—southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa—are her attempt at a translation. They visualize an aura, perhaps flashes of insight that are possible even without sight. Perhaps emotions. Perhaps an interaction between the inner and outer worlds. Perhaps also something that is difficult for sighted people to put into words.
The photographer sees her work not least as an ‘invitation’ to us to empathise, rather than to look away. She says: ‘The world touches us when we touch it.’ To make what she was doing with the images tangible for the children too, she perforated the photos by hand, with tiny dots and delicate lines. A tiny gesture towards making peace with disability. With the moment – and later, perhaps, even with life itself.
Based in Warsaw, the 48-year-old photographer – having studied archaeology and photography – is, amongst other things, a co-founder of Poleczki.art, a centre that combines a gallery, library, studio and teaching spaces for contemporary photography.
Mahmoud Abu Hamda, Palestine: “Wings of Childhood and Peace”
At first glance, it may seem surprising to award a peace prize to images depicting a childhood in Gaza. After all, in recent years there has been hardly any other place where children in particular have suffered so terribly from bombs, destruction, displacement, hunger, fear, injuries and the loss of parents, siblings and friends.
And yet, even here, even amidst the rubble, children can be seen laughing; a boy plays the violin; boys and girls swing and run about; they sit happily together, carve out little spaces for carefree fun, look after a pet, carry on with their lives even in the darkest of places, and play. Childhood here, as the Palestinian photographer Mahmoud Abu Hamda shows in his moving pictures, has not completely disappeared, has not been entirely wiped out. It simply has to hold its own under immense pressure. This requires bravery, and certainly also the ability to forget and to push things to the back of one’s mind.
Mahmoud Abu Hamda has titled the images in this series ‘The Wings of Childhood and Peace’. Wings which, at least on the surface, are neither burnt nor broken – but can still carry one away, even from the midst of war. And to a place where human dignity remains inviolable.
Hamda, aged 36, trained in multimedia at the University College of Applied Sciences and later held a teaching post in photography at the University of Gaza. He devoted himself to nature photography and food photography, and, until the outbreak of war, to all facets of everyday life in Gaza. Then, however, he experienced displacement and hardship within his own family and was himself injured during the Israeli Air Force’s bombing of a high-rise building. He photographed hunger whilst he himself was starving.
Magnum, the world’s leading photography agency, has already honoured Hamda with a major publication. His work has been exhibited in Amsterdam, amongst other places, and was awarded one of the prestigious Lucia Awards in 2023.
(Excerpts from the laudatory speeches by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
The prize money for the three award-winning photo series was made possible thanks to the support of the Vienna Regional Guild of Professional Photography, represented by Eva Kelety, Guild Master of the Vienna Regional Guild of Professional Photography and Federal Guild Master of Professional Photography in Austria.
Keynote speech by Cornelius Obonya, actor and director, honorary ambassador for UNICEF Austria (excerpts)
The keynote speech of the evening was delivered by Cornelius Obonya, actor and director, honorary ambassador for UNICEF Austria.
“How shall we begin? How about we acknowledge that we and our children are faced with the reality that here on our continent – or rather, on its periphery – there is a government of a state that has, yet again, allowed an invasion of another country to take place. And that there are people who have obeyed this order and are going along with it. And that, once again, there are lone perpetrators whose banality of evil is rearing its head.
I am reminded here of the brief video footage from a CCTV camera at a Ukrainian factory. It shows two Russian soldiers shooting two civilian employees of that factory without warning. They shot them in the back, mind you.
We’re told we should negotiate with the aggressor. But what if they won’t? A peace agreement can only last as long as everyone – and I mean absolutely everyone – adheres to it.
Oh yes – and let us please tell our children that here in this country we do not vote for parties that wish to submit to the aggressor. These people have just one single image in their minds: that of the head of state riding through a river, bare-chested and with a rifle slung over his shoulder. They confuse power with strength, and peaceful deliberation with the elimination of people.
It is our duty to impart every single truth – and I mean every single one – to our children. They are capable of handling it. But only if we learn to hold ourselves – once again – to that standard.
I congratulate everyone on their awards. May the message conveyed in and through your photographs lead to better news from the war-torn regions of this planet.”
About the Global Peace Photo Award 2026
A total of 27,846 images from 144 countries were submitted to the Global Peace Photo Award 2026. The majority of entries came from India, USA, China, Italy, Germany, France, Nigeria, Russia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The entries were judged by a high-calibre international jury. See: https://globalpeacephotoaward.org/jury
The Global Peace Photo Award is organised in cooperation with Edition Lammerhuber, the Photographic Society (PHG), UNESCO, the Austrian Parliament, the Association of Parliamentary Editors, the International Press Institute (IPI), the World Press Photo Foundation, POY LATAM, APA – Austria Press Agency, the German Photographic Society (DGPh), UNICEF Austria and the Vienna Insurance Group.
The prize was inspired by the Austrian pacifist and writer Alfred Hermann Fried (born 11 November 1864 in Vienna; died 4 May 1921 in Vienna). In 1911, Fried was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Tobias Asser, the organiser of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.
All photos from the event © Johannes Zinner