Tūhura Photography Competition
New Zealand's own awards to celebrate our nature, our landscapes, and you, our people, taking images of all of it!
Taken a great photo this year? From the beautiful shots of nearly-professionals to children taking photos while exploring the world, from the Insta-obsessed to a beautiful snap you happened to take on a walk through your town, we want you to send them to us!
Enter your best photos in any of our four categories: Wildlife, Botanical, Landscape, and new for 2026, Wild Aotearoa!
This year, we have a new category that is open to all residents of Aotearoa New Zealand. Wild Aotearoa is a pop-up category celebrating the wild beauty of our country. Non-Otago residents can submit a maximum of 10 entries within this category.
To help you hone your photography skills ahead of entering, check out our photography workshops, held during the school holidays.
So, come on Aotearoa, grab your cameras and get snapping!
Entries close 12pm, Sunday 1 February.
Please Note
The competition is open to all amateur photographers in New Zealand. Professionals (defined as having earned 20% or more of their income through photography at any time) are barred from entry, as are commissioned images, images used for a commercial purpose, or images entered in other photography competitions.
Images that are heavily digitally altered will not be accepted as entries.
Otago residents can submit a maximum of 15 photographic entries overall, with a limit of 10 photographic entries per category.
Non-Otago residents can submit a maximum of 10 photographic entries overall, within the Wild Aotearoa category only.
Entries will be judged by a panel of judges — this is a blind judging process.
Full terms and conditions are available here.
Entry Specifications
Maximum file size 10 MB.
Photos must be submitted as JPEG files. They can be portrait or landscape orientation.
Images may be printed to these dimensions: 200 mm x 250 mm (8 in x 10 in), A2 (420 mm x 594 mm), A1 (594 mm x 841 mm), or A0 (841 mm x 1189 mm) and displayed digitally (1920 x 1080 pixels).
Images may be cropped to the above specifications as required.
Borders, watermarks, signatures or other additions will result in images being disqualified.