Drone photo of family sheltering in the remains of their burnt-out home wins world’s richest photo competition
November 11, 2026
Bangladeshi photographer Pinu Rahman has won the grand prize in the world’s richest photography competition – the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA).
Titled ‘Under the Same Sky’, the photo shows a family of five sleeping side by side within the surviving concrete walls of their home in Dhaka, Bangladesh, after a fire in November 2025 destroyed some 1,500 dwellings.
“[HIPA’s] fifteenth edition was themed ‘Family’, in line with the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, to designate 2026 as the ‘Year of the Family’, said Ali Bin Thalith, Secretary General of HIPA.
“This initiative aims to strengthen family bonds, support social stability and instil authentic Emirati values in future generations.”
With its depiction of family, resilience and the human capacity to endure, Rahman’s image resonated strongly with the HIPA jury.
The prize pot of this prestigious international competition is an incredible US$1 million and Rahman will be leaving the UAE with US$200,000 [£148,700 / AU$289,000] for his Grand Prize-winning picture, which was captured on a DJI Mavic 3 Pro camera drone.
The judges, who included award-winning visual editor Kurt Mutchler, landscape photographer Ivan Pedretti, award-winning photojournalist Tara Todras-Whitehill and Sami Alramyan, the Kuwaiti photographer, documentary and humanitarian photography consultant, decided Rahman’s photo best met the brief of 2026’s edition of HIPA, themed ‘Family’.
This season, the Grand Prize could have been chosen from any category; the winner of the ‘Family’ category, by UAE photographer Hamid Obaid Al Ali, was recognized for capturing a tender moment of parental devotion.
• Read our guide to the best DJI drones in 2026
HIPA held the annual awards ceremony for its fifteenth competition season at Dubai’s Museum of the Future, one of the city’s many iconic landmarks, and Digital Camera World was there.
Attended by leading figures in the international photography community, the event also bestowed the Photography Appreciation Award on Japanese photographer Kazuyoshi Nomachi, accompanied by a cash prize of US$100,000 [£74,410/A$144,500].
Announcing his award, HIPA said Nomachi’s “lifelong catalogue acts as a macro-study of the global human family, capturing the resilient bonds between peoples and their lands.”
French photojournalist Véronique De Viguerie received the HIPA Photographer of the Year award. While she has worked in conflict zones for more than 20 years, “… war itself is not her subject,” says HIPA.
“What interests her is what survives within it: desire, humour, beauty, absurdity, tenderness, resistance and the rhythms of ordinary life.”
De Viguerie won a cash prize of US$80,000 [£59,500/A$115,600].
And the Photography Content Creator Award, conferred by the Jury after a submission and nomination process, went to Dr Ali Mohamad of the Syrian Arab Republic.
“A photographer, documentary filmmaker, educator and entrepreneur whose work is driven by a passion for visual storytelling and the creative industries,” Dr Mohamad collected a cash prize of US$50,000 [£37,200/A$72,300].
The ‘Family’ winners get to share a cut of the competition’s staggering US$1,000,000 prize fund – £749,300 / AU$1,456,000.
While other international photo awards might be bigger in terms of the volume of images submitted – more than 1 million photographs have been submitted over 15 seasons – HIPA’s prize pot tops them all.
The winners of the Family, Sports Photography, General (Colour), General (Black and White) and Dreams Through AI categories each receive US$40,000 [£29,700/A$58,000].
Reflecting the need to submit 5-10 photographs that tell one story, the Portfolio (Story-Telling) category winner receives US$50,000 [£37,200/A$72,300].
HIPA offers a wide range of categories for photographers to enter, and submitting images to the competition is free.
Categories include color and black and white (sub-categories of the popular ‘General’ category), Portfolio (story-telling) and Sports.
New for the fifteenth season was Dreams Through Al – the only category where Al-generated images were accepted.
For all other categories, participants were required to submit a written declaration confirming that no artificial intelligence tools or software were used in the creation of the images.
Other award winners announced at the ceremony in Dubai included:
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