TIME World Press Photo

Here Are the Best News Photos of the Year

Each year, World Press Photo selects the best photojournalism images produced over the previous 12 months.

Photographers are often at the center of ongoing wars, disasters and conflicts, showing the courage to brave a moment for a chance to document it. Such is reflected in this year’s World Press Photo winning news images: from refugees to teenage Islamic State fighters, child victims of air raids to the mourning Nepalese after a brutal earthquake.

The images were selected out of 82,912 images submitted to eight different categories—including Sports, Portraits and Wildlife—in the 58th annual World Press Photo contest.

The overall winner—and First Prize winner in the Spot News category—photographer Warren Richardson, captured a refugee father handing his baby to another man through barbed-wire at the Hungarian-Serbian border.

Corentin Fohlen won Second Prize in the Spot News category, one of the most contested fields, for his image of a demonstration against terrorism in Paris, following a series of five attacks that began at the headquarters for satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

In the General News Singles category, Brazilian Mauricio Lima won for his powerful New York Times image of a teenage Islamic State fighter being treated for burns at a Kurdish hospital.

The Times’ Sergey Ponomarev won First Prize in the General News category for his reporting on Europe’s refugee crisis, which depicted migrants arriving by boat, boarding a train or crossing from Croatia into Slovenia.

Kevin Frayer, whose work in Tibet was published on TIME LightBox, dominated the Daily Life category for his series on Tibetan Buddhists in the Bliss Dharma Assemble and his image of Chinese men pulling a tricycle to a coal-fired power plant.

Rachel Lowry is a writer and contributor for TIME LightBox. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @rachelllowry.

General News, 1st prize singles. A doctor rubs ointment on the burns of a 16-year-old Islamic State fighter named Jacob in front of a poster of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, at a Y.P.G. hospital compound on the outskirts of Hasaka, Syria on Aug. 1, 2015. General News, 2nd prize singles. Refugees travel in darkness through Europe to avoid detection; Lesbos, Greece, Dec. 6, 2015.

Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com


YOU BROKE TIME.COM!

Dear TIME Reader,

As a regular visitor to TIME.com, we are sure you enjoy all the great journalism created by our editors and reporters. Great journalism has great value, and it costs money to make it. One of the main ways we cover our costs is through advertising.

The use of software that blocks ads limits our ability to provide you with the journalism you enjoy. Consider turning your Ad Blocker off so that we can continue to provide the world class journalism you have become accustomed to.

The TIME Team