Italian photographer Federico Veronesi wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 with elephant image

The winning image

Italian photographer Federico Veronesi has won the overall title in the 62nd Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Natural History Museum in London. The winning picture, titled 'Aftermath', shows a female elephant carrying a dead calf, its leg wedged between her tusk and trunk. Veronesi made the image in Namibia's Huab River Valley in September 2025, while following a herd of elephants along a dry riverbed. He followed the herd for several hours, and the female carried the calf for hours, setting it down to feed or drink before lifting it again. The calf still looked fresh and had not stiffened, so Veronesi judged that it had been born that night or only hours before.

Veronesi said the encounter stood out from twenty years of photographing animals.

Of all the 20 years I've done photographing animals, this is the most heart-wrecking and fascinating and dramatic.

He hopes the photograph will lead viewers to see animals as individuals with their own relationships, memories and emotions, and he describes the picture as a brief glimpse into their world.

Not the mother

At first Veronesi assumed the elephant was the calf's mother. After he shared his photographs with an elephant research project working in the area, he learned that this was not certain. Christin Winter, who runs conservation programmes at Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA), said the elephant is not the calf's mother. According to Winter, the female, now 14, lost a calf of her own two years ago. Since that loss, she has been seen four times carrying stillborn calves belonging to other elephants, and this is the first time such behaviour has been documented in the area. Veronesi said the revelation adds another layer to the emotions the scene conveys, and he read the behaviour as the elephant still trying to reconnect with her own lost calf years later.

The Natural History Museum says behaviours centred on death have been observed in both Asian and African elephants. These include making particular sounds, guarding the dead, inspecting and handling bones, and carrying the deceased. Some researchers suggest these actions could show an elephant's path toward understanding death, while others read them as possible displays of grief.

Jury and entries

Kathy Moran, chair of the jury, said the photograph works on several levels and summed up its appeal in two sentences.

Emotionally it's a gut punch, heartbreakingly poignant. Intellectually it's proof that animals have cognition.

This year the competition received 65,403 entries from 121 countries and territories. For the first time in the contest's 62-year history, both the overall winner in the adult category and the overall winner in the youth category were black-and-white photographs. The youth title went to a British photographer living in Zimbabwe, who was 14 when he took his dung beetle picture pushing a ball of dung. Category winners include fluorescent images of fungi in Greece, a common octopus peeking out from kelp off south-west England, and a pair of shoebills gathering nesting material in South Africa.

Exhibition and tickets

The winning pictures, alongside the category winners, go on show at the Natural History Museum in London from Friday 16 October 2026. The exhibition runs until 11 July 2027 and will then travel on a UK and international tour. Tickets are sold on the museum's website, with prices starting at £8.50 for children, £13.60 concession and £17 for adults. The competition is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.

1. 2025-09Veronesi photographs the female elephant and her dead calf in the Huab River Valley
2. Oct 16, 2026Exhibition opens at the Natural History Museum, London
3. Jul 11, 2027Exhibition scheduled to close in London