Announcing the Winners of Picture of the Year 2025!

Hi everyone,

Wikimedia Commons is pleased to finally announce the winners of this year's Picture of the Year 2025 contest! We had some truly incredible finalists to choose from, but the community has spoken.

Here are your top three winning images:

• 

  

  First place: The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9, 2023, leaving widespread destruction in the Rimal area.
  Attribution: WAFA (Q2915969) / CC-BY-SA 3.0
• 

  

  Second place: Baby cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus) sleeping at Cape cross, Namibia.
  Attribution: Giles Laurent / CC-BY-SA 4.0
• 

  

  Third place: A gigantic jet photographed from the International Space Station by astronaut Nichole Ayers.
  Attribution: public domain

You can view the full results and see where all your favorite images placed here: Full 2025 Results

I also want to highlight what an incredible turnout we had. In the second round, we saw a massive jump in both the number of users voting and the total votes cast. We had exactly 13,979 votes cast by 3,509 users! To put that in perspective, last year we had 7,403 votes from 2,837 users. It is amazing to see that level of growth and community engagement.

Thank you to everyone who voted, helped organize, and generally made the contest such a huge success this year!

Regards,
ZI Jony
For the POTY Committee 20:04, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

File:500px photo (140475539).jpeg

File:500px photo (140475539).jpeg has been nominated for deletion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:500px photo (140475539).jpeg This is a deletion request for the community to discuss whether the nominated page should be kept or deleted. Please voice your opinion in the linked request above. Thank you very much! If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you! Afrikaans ∙ العربية ∙ беларуская ∙ беларуская (тарашкевіца) ∙ български ∙ ပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏ ∙ বাংলা ∙ bosanski ∙ català ∙ čeština ∙ dansk ∙ Deutsch ∙ Deutsch (Sie-Form) ∙ Zazaki ∙ ދިވެހިބަސް ∙ Ελληνικά ∙ English ∙ Esperanto ∙ español ∙ eesti ∙ فارسی ∙ suomi ∙ français ∙ galego ∙ עברית ∙ hrvatski ∙ magyar ∙ հայերեն ∙ Bahasa Indonesia ∙ íslenska ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ 조선말 ∙ кыргызча ∙ македонски ∙ മലയാളം ∙ Bahasa Melayu ∙ မြန်မာဘာသာ ∙ norsk bokmål ∙ Plattdüütsch ∙ Nederlands ∙ norsk nynorsk ∙ norsk ∙ occitan ∙ polski ∙ پښتو ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ română ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenčina ∙ slovenščina ∙ shqip ∙ српски / srpski ∙ svenska ∙ ไทย ∙ Türkçe ∙ українська ∙ Tiếng Việt ∙ 中文 ∙ 中文（简体） ∙ 中文（繁體） ∙ +/−

A1Cafel (talk) 03:06, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

File:IBPA 16405 - Escola Especial Renascença visita Piquete EPTChê - 2018-09-12 - Divulgação-PMPA.jpg

File:IBPA 16405 - Escola Especial Renascença visita Piquete EPTChê - 2018-09-12 - Divulgação-PMPA.jpg has been nominated for deletion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:IBPA 16405 - Escola Especial Renascença visit… This is a deletion request for the community to discuss whether the nominated page should be kept or deleted. Please voice your opinion in the linked request above. Thank you very much! If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you! Afrikaans ∙ العربية ∙ беларуская ∙ беларуская (тарашкевіца) ∙ български ∙ ပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏ ∙ বাংলা ∙ bosanski ∙ català ∙ čeština ∙ dansk ∙ Deutsch ∙ Deutsch (Sie-Form) ∙ Zazaki ∙ ދިވެހިބަސް ∙ Ελληνικά ∙ English ∙ Esperanto ∙ español ∙ eesti ∙ فارسی ∙ suomi ∙ français ∙ galego ∙ עברית ∙ hrvatski ∙ magyar ∙ հայերեն ∙ Bahasa Indonesia ∙ íslenska ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ 조선말 ∙ кыргызча ∙ македонски ∙ മലയാളം ∙ Bahasa Melayu ∙ မြန်မာဘာသာ ∙ norsk bokmål ∙ Plattdüütsch ∙ Nederlands ∙ norsk nynorsk ∙ norsk ∙ occitan ∙ polski ∙ پښتو ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ română ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenčina ∙ slovenščina ∙ shqip ∙ српски / srpski ∙ svenska ∙ ไทย ∙ Türkçe ∙ українська ∙ Tiếng Việt ∙ 中文 ∙ 中文（简体） ∙ 中文（繁體） ∙ +/−

User who nominated the file for deletion (Nominator) : ~2026-29479-38.

I'm a computer program; please don't ask me questions but ask the user who nominated your file(s) for deletion (shown above) or at our Help Desk. //Deletion Notification Bot 2 (talk) 20:08, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Commons Photographers: Our next meeting (05/2026)

Dear member of the Commons Photographers User Group,

I hope you’re well and enjoy your time as a photographer on Wikimedia Commons. In my role of the new chair of the user group, I have a couple of updates to share with you.

After the election, the new board met for the first time on March 21 and immediately got to work. We elected the organization’s officers and decided to move from quarterly to monthly board meetings. We believe meeting more frequently will create more opportunities to serve our members effectively and help move the group forward.

We also successfully applied for a pre-conference at the upcoming Wikimania in Paris (July 21–25). If you’re planning to attend the conference, please consider joining us on July 21th for a day full of conversations about photography and Commons. Please sign up here if you’re interested.

And finally, it’s my pleasure to invite you to our first online meeting, which will take place on May 31. Our member Wojciech, an experienced concert photographer, will give a talk on photographing orchestras during live performances. I’m especially excited that we’ll have the opportunity to meet online again and am very much looking forward to this event.

Please feel free to sign up for our first meeting in 2026 on this page: Online Meeting on May 31st.

In the meanwhile, I hope you're well and have a great time taking photos!

All the best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 14:09, 20 May 2026 (UTC)