National Photography Prize 2026

Every two years the National Photography Prize offers an opportunity to consider the vital role of photography in contemporary art in Australia. The National Photography Prize brings together artists from across Australia who are developing and challenging photographic language and techniques.

Generously supported by the MAMA Art Foundation, the National Photography Prize offers an acquisitive $40,000 Audray Banfield Award, the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for an emerging practitioner, and further supports a number of artists through focused acquisitions.

Winner The 2026 National Photography Prize ($40,000)
Paul Knight lives and works on Darkinjung Country in Ettalong Beach, NSW. His practice explores intimacy, gentleness, and the social structures that shape closeness. His photographic practice considers the image as a container for experience and examines how loving bonds are formed and expressed.

Knight’s ongoing series Chamber Music documents the domestic life he shares with his partner Peter. Through portraiture and still life, Knight's prints balance intention and chance and create a sustained meditation on intimacy as a counterpoint to power and hierarchy. The work reflects on how relationships are shaped and communicated through everyday life.

Winner John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship ($5000)
Morgan Hogg is a multidisciplinary artist and creative producer of Cook Island Māori (Ngāti Tāne), Tahitian and English descent. She is based on unceded Wangal and Dharug lands in Sydney. Working across installation and performance, Hogg’s practice explores cultural identity, displacement and intergenerational knowledge through the lens of her Kūki Airani heritage.

Silver tongues is an experimental moving image work that draws on the darker mythologies and storytelling of the Pacific. Through Cook Island Ura (a traditional dance), Hogg explores the role of the Momokē, the water people of the Avaiki (underworld), who lure the souls of those who are almost ready to the leave the ‘enua (the land) and enter into the next life.

The 2026 National Photography Prize finalists include leading Australian artists Alana Hunt, Alex Walker, Amalia Lindo, Arlo Mountford, David Stephenson, JD Reforma, Lisa Stonham, Marian Tubbs, Morgan Hogg, Nathanael Edwards, Paul Knight, and Sarah Rhodes.

Judge
Natasha Bullock, Senior Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria.

Finalist selection panel
Ellen Dahl, 2024 National Photography Prize recipient
Alinta Maguire, First Nations Curator, Murray Art Museum Albury
Blair French, CEO, Murray Art Museum Albury