İstanbul Photo Awards is an international news photography contest organized by Anadolu Ajansı,  global news agency for more than 100th years . The contest aims to contribute to the sphere of news photography and offers a perspective shaped by the region’s unique position at the center of diverse cultures. The awards reward endeavors of courageous and talented professional photographers from around the world on merit.  İstanbul Photo Awards has become one of the most widely known news photography contests in the world.

Along with the generous awards of the contest aiming to support the hard work and dedication of news photographers worldwide, the application is totally free. 

Istanbul Photo Awards receives a lot of attention from photojournalists from all around the world. Around 16,000 photographers registered to the contest in nine years. 2024 is the 10th year of the contest.

In 2015, Daniel Berehulak won the Photo of the Year award with his photograph depicting the Ebola crisis. In 2016, Abd Doumany’s image of an injured Syrian boy was chosen as Photo of the Year by the international jury and in 2017, photographer Frederic Lafargue’s image titled “Escaping from Daesh” was chosen Photo of the Year 2017. In 2018, Damir Sagolj won the Photo of the Year award with the image of a dead boy in refugee camp in Banglades. Ahmad Gharabli's photo of a Palestinian women and Israeli police security officer taking photo of each other chosen as Photo of the Year 2019. Yik Fei Lam, Hong Kong based photojournalist, got the Photo of the Year 2020 award. Mohammed Shajahan received the 2021 Photo of the Year awards with his photo titled Mom Love. Konstantinos Tsakalidis received the award in 2022 with his photo about wildfires for Bloomberg. Sergey Kozlov awarded with the Photo of the Year 2023 prize with his Ukraine-Russia War titled image for EPA.

All the winning photographs have the power to engage people against wars and conflicts, and to familiarize them with different cultures. The jury, consisting of prestigious names from different fields of photography, had a very tough time selecting the most powerful photos of the year from such a strong field. Every year international jury meets to select the winners.

Every year online applications are accepted via http://istanbulphotoawards.com. The results of the contest announced by the end of jury gathering each year. Award winning photographs will be published in photobook which will be send almost everywhere all around the world to the photography professionals and displayed at exhibitions in significant galleries around the world such as Istanbul, Shanghai, New York, Vienna, Tokyo, London and Moscow.