Oceanographic Magazine and Blancpain announced the finalists for the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year contest on Thursday morning, moving the competition into its next phase before the category winners and overall winner are revealed in September.
Will Harrison said this year’s finalists have produced work of extraordinary depth and courage, and he cast the images as more than striking pictures from below the surface. In his view, they carry stories the planet most needs to hear, and that gives the announcement weight beyond the contest itself.
The competition is built around a familiar contradiction. It celebrates the ocean’s beauty while pressing the case for protection in a rapidly changing world, one where oceans cover 71 percent of Earth and hold 321,003,271 cubic miles of water. That scale has not spared what lives there: warming waters and habitat destruction have left ocean creatures struggling, making the photographs feel less like decoration than evidence.
That is why Harrison’s remarks land with force. He said the pressures on the ocean are growing, and so is the importance of the artists who bear witness to them. The finalists now carry that burden into the final stretch of the contest, with September set to decide which images rise to the top and whether one photographer can best capture both the ocean’s beauty and the damage it is enduring.
