Tasweer Awards 2026: Meet the 30 Photographers Shaping Visual Storytelling in WANA

The Tasweer Photo Festival Qatar’s 2026 jury releases the winners, propelling photography from Western Asia and North Africa to a new international platform. These are the 30 photographers who were recognized at a special celebration in Fire Station Cinema on World Photography Day.

The winners come from both existing and emerging voices from the WANA region. Themes in their work range from cultural identity, memory, displacement, heritage, through to family and social change, and provide intimate glimpses of an ever-changing region.

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10 Project Award Winners Receive QAR 30,000

Photographers are encouraged to work on comprehensive bodies of work, and not just individual photographs, with support from The Tasweer Project Award. The 10 winners each win a QAR 30,000 grant and have the chance to receive some curatorial mentoring and join an international network of photographers.

The 2026 Project Award winners include Amat Al-Rahman Alafory, In Quest of Stage Seven; Ebrahim Alpoor, Swahili Arabs and Issam Chorrib, A Pair of Gloves; along with Haitham Nsais, Fallen Seagulls.

Laura Menassa, the other winner, is for (G)oldies, Mohammad Kotb for Red Brick Dreams and Sadiq Al-Harasi for What Do Fathers Leave Behind? and Shahad Alqassmi for Echoes of Time, while Wadah Omer won for Weaving the Earth.

20 Photographers Recognized for Single Images

The Single Image Award honours individual photographs that can tell a strong story around a personal or a regional theme. They get QAR 2,000 each, and their work is showcased on Tasweer’s digital platform, too.

Among the 20 winners are Abdullatif Alnaemi, Amna Marafi, Avijit Biswas, Bahaaeldin Elgamal, El Mehdi Kharbouch, Elsie Haddad, Hazim Elhag and Hisham Naeem as well as Maram Elkhashab.

Other important names merited included among them are those of: Mariam Hassan, Mohammed Aljassem, Mohammed Gharib, Najla Said, Noora Mohammed Al-Henzab, Rania Deabes, Reem Al-Badr, Satti, Yousef Fatehallah and Yousef Naser.

From Personal Memory to Regional Identity

The Tasweer Awards are a reflection of the breadth of diversity of stories originating from the WANA region that make the Awards so significant. Works like Swahili Arabs, Red Brick Dreams and Weaving the Earth show the power of photography to capture the communities, histories and identities that could otherwise be lost from the collective story.

The winning images will also be showcased in the fourth edition of the Tasweer Photo Festival in 2027 for another audience to discover the region through the lens of its photographers.

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