World Press Photo 2025, Mahmoud Ajjour and the shot that tells the children in the horror of the war

«While his family flew from an Israeli attack, Mahmoud turned back to encourage others to go on. An explosion cut out one arm and mutilated the other. The family was evacuated in Qatar, where, after medical treatment, Mahmoud is learning to play with his phone, writing and opening the doors with his feet. Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to have prostheses and live his life like any other child. The children are affected disproportionately by the war. The United Nations estimate that by December 2024, Gaza had the highest number of amputated children per capita all over the world. The photographer, originally from Gaza and evacuated in turn in December 2023, lives in the same residential complex as Doha di Mahmoud. He has close ties with the local families and documented some of the few seriously injured citizens of Gaza who managed to go out to receive treatments ». This caption accompanies the winning photo of the World Press Photo 2025. The photo of the Year 2025 was taken by the Palestinian photographer Samar Abu Eloufbased in Doha, for a shot made for The New York Times which portrays Mahmoud Ajjour, A seriously injured child in March 2024 while fleeing from an Israeli attack to Gaza City.

The executive director of World Press Photo, Joumana El Zein Khoury, said: «This is a silent photo that speaks strongly. It tells the story of a single child, but also of a wider war, whose consequences will extend for generations. Scrolling through our archive, in the 70th year of World Press Photo, I find myself in front of too many images like this. I am deeply grateful to photographers who, despite personal risks and emotional weight, choose to document these stories, allowing us to understand, feel empathy and find the motivation to act. Looking at the next 70 years, World Press Photo will continue to stay at the side of photographers who risk everything to show us the truth ».

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists“The war between Israel and Gaza has caused the death of multiple journalists, within a year, compared to any other conflict, the CPJ has ever documented”. As of April 4, 165 Palestinian journalists, two Israelis and six Lebanese were killed, including some cases in which Palestinian journalists would have been deliberately targeted. Also other countries from which the stories selected from the jury come place in low positions in Reporters Without Borders 2024 Press Freedom Indexincluding: Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sudan, Venezuela and Russia.

Two photographs were selected as finalists, next to the winner of the photo of the Year:

Night crossing
John Moore, United States, Getty Images

Some Chinese migrants warm in cold rain after crossing the border between the United States and Mexico. This image, at the same time suspended and intimate, restores the complexity of migration along the border – a reality often simplified and politicized in the US public debate.

World Press Photo of the Year Finalist_online_musuk nolte_panos pictures_bertha foundation

Droughts in the Amazon
Musk Nolte, Peru/Mexico, Panos Pictures, Bertha Foundation

A boy brings food to his mother, who lives in the village of Manacapuru. The village, once reachable by boat, today – due to drought – can only be reached on foot, along two kilometers along the dry bed of a Amazonian river. The clear contrast between arid scenarios, similar to a desert, and the largest rainforest in the world makes visible, in a disturbing way, the absence of water.

The awarded stories will be presented to millions of people as part of the Annual itinerant exhibition of World Press Photo, which will stop in over 60 cities around the world. Here some of the images.