The award ceremony for the winners of the international HUAWEI XMAGE Awards 2026 photography competition took place at the Grand Palais in Paris.
This year the competition marks its tenth anniversary. The organisers received around 820 thousand entries, from which the jury selected the 100 best works.
The top award, the Grand Prix, went to Ali Abdul Hamid Al-Arbash for his series "Light and Shadows of France", shot on a Huawei P60 Pro. It comprises four photographs of everyday scenes in Paris: a child among soap bubbles, a man next to a poster, a couple against a sunset and people on a bench by the Seine.
In the jury's assessment, the photographer succeeded in conveying the atmosphere of the city through the interplay of light and shadow.
Another top award was presented to Mai Shunxi for the work "Fleeting Encounter". The work is dedicated to chance encounters between people in a big city. Members of the jury noted the subject's expressive gaze and the contrast between her motionless face and the blurred movement of a passer-by.
The third Grand Prix winner was Wan Ben with the photograph "A Gaze Through Time and Space". In the black-and-white image, ancient stone figures on a plateau appear alongside an aircraft trail in the sky. In the jury's view, the composition conveys the contrast between the eternal and the fleeting.
