The Siena Awards Photo Festival is back for 2026, and this year’s event is packed with acclaimed photojournalists exhibiting their work exploring themes of war, human rights, humanity's relationship with nature, and global inequality.
Running from 10 October to 29 November, the festival, which takes place in the historical Italian city of Siena, will also see the prestigious Siena International Photo Awards (SIPA) presented, as well as two other photographic awards, and a host of artist talks.
Among the more significant photojournalistic names this year is Cinzia Canneri. The Italian's work portrays the human condition, paying particular attention to themes of gender, migration, conflict, and social change.
Canneri’s exhibit, Women's Bodies as Battlefields, documents violence against women in conflicts through the lens of the Tigray War, a civil conflict in Ethiopia which took place over 2020 to 2022.
The project, which predates the conflict, began in 2017, with Canneri initially photographing Eritrean women fleeing their country and seeking refuge in Ethiopia in 2017.
When the war in Tigray began in November 2020, she expanded the project to include Tigrayan women fleeing northern Ethiopia, of which tens of thousands are thought to have been subject to “horrific” sexual violence.
Canneri's project went on to gain major acclaim, winning the 2025 World Press Photo Award in the “Long-Term Projects, Africa” category.
Environmental photojournalists, Jasper Doest (Netherlands) and Pierpaolo Mittica (Italy), also feature at this year’s festival.
Doest’s exhibit, Meet Bob, tells the story of the namesake rescued Caribbean flamingo, and how the bird became a symbol of environmental conservation in Curaçao.
While Mittica’s Chernobyl: Memory of a Disaster examines the Chernobyl disaster 40 years after the explosion of reactor number four.
Tickets for the Siena Awards Photo Festival 2026 are now on sale. Visit the official festival website for all ticket
You might also like…
Here’s our expert take on the best professional cameras. Top photojournalists rely on high-end gear to get the job done.
