ENTERING.
The annual Event Photography Awards are a not-for-profit competition open to both professional and amateur photographers over 18 years old.
Images entered into the 2026 competition must have been taken during the calendar year of 2025.
Entered images must be uploaded in high-resolution format and should be JPEG, PNG or TIFF files no smaller than 800KB, but no larger than 5MB.
A fee of £25 + VAT is charged to enter up to 5 photos. A further £25 + VAT is charged for each additional set of up to 5 photos.
Entrants can submit as many photos as they like into as many categories as they like. Please carefully consider the category into which each photo is entered. However, photos may be entered into more than one category and will be judged accordingly.
There are eighteen categories to enter, including three separate classes for Music Events – Concerts, Performers and Audience.
Entries will close at midnight on Tuesday 31st March 2026.
Judging will take place during April and short-listed photographers will be informed of their success by early May and invited to the EPA Awards Night (date & venue TBC), where all the winners, runners-up and highly-commended awards will be announced.
Awards night TICKET, TROPHIES, Kudos, BADGES, MEDIA COVERAGE & CASH.
All short-listed photographers (usually around 40% of entrants) will be invited to attend the highly enjoyable awards event as guests of competition founders Off To Work, the UK event industry’s premier staffing agency (ticket value = £90).
The last three EPA Awards Events have been held at 66 Portland Place – the home of RIBA, which is now undergoing an extensive refurbishment. As such, the awards event for EPA 2026 will be held in an exciting new venue (TBC) in early June 2026.
A gallery of all the short-listed images, amounting to well over 100 prints, will be on display for guests to view while enjoying drinks and catering.
Short-listed photographers enjoy a 50% discount on tickets for their guests.
A fun and fast-paced awards ceremony is held in a separate room during which every category winner is invited on stage to receive a handsome personalised engraved trophy, while the Overall Winner and the winner of the Portfolio Award, who will be named Event Photographer of the Year, also receives cheques for £1,000.
Being an EPA award winner is a prestigious accolade that can be highly beneficial to a photographer’s business. Winners, runners-up, and highly-commended photographers receive an 'EPA Badge of Honour' to display on their website and social media, moreover their winning images, with associated contact details, are permanently added to EPA website’s gallery of Past Awards.
TICKET
TROPHIES
BADGES
KUDOS
MEDIA COVERAGE
£1,000 First Prize
how to &
why Enter.
MEDIA COVERAGE & EXPOSURE.
PRESS.
As well as a fulsome array of event industry media, each year the Event Photography Awards also enjoys coverage in the national press and now also in photography media, such as Professional Photographer and the very widely read Digital Camera magazine, which included an 8-page feature on the competition winners in its August 2025 issue.
Indeed, the overall award winners, as well as certain category winners, invariably receive coverage in print, but also online, on e-casts and through very well-followed social media channels. The reach of all the media that covers the awards amounts to some 7 million readers and users, while the EPA has well over 12,000 social followers.
SOCIAL MEDIA.
Entrants are often featured in our ongoing marketing of the awards through various media outlets as well as EPA social media channels. When boosted by coverage through Off to Work’s accounts, the combined following reaches well over 40,000, with Instagram and Linkedin to the fore. Posts are often based on new entries and news from, or features on, past award winners.
WEBSITE.
All the main award-winning photographs from the annual competition, including runners-up and highly commended shots, are uploaded onto the EPA website’s comprehensive gallery of Past Awards and remain available for event professionals to reference – each with the photographers’ contact details and/or a social media link immediately to hand.
There are also opportunities to have stories and coverage on our website's news channel, which will be amplified through our social media channels.
EXHIBITIONS.
Many award-winning entries are displayed through special gallery-style stands at various events and exhibitions, including the UK event industry’s leading trade show International Confex held in February at London Excel.
AWARDS CEREMONY.
At least six short-listed images (often nine) in each category will be on display at the awards ceremony, which is attended by a plethora of influential event industry professionals, as well as journalists from a range of the industry media, many of whom commission photography.
Guests at past EPA awards night have told us that they enjoy interacting at the event with the photographers whose work is on display. As such, attending photographers have special name badges that highlight past award wins and the categories which they are short-listed in.
PAST WINNERS.
