The best science isn't just smart – it's stunning. Don't believe us? Well, for 28 years Wellcome has held an annual photography competition celebrating powerful images that capture health, science, and medicine.
The Wellcome Photography Prize explores many different areas, such as psychiatric care and the daily realities of living with a disability. This year, the biomedical imaging category returns, offering a compelling look at the aesthetics of science and a chance to see medical conditions in amazing detail. Other categories in this year's competition include 'Solo photography' and 'A storytelling series'.
Highlights include the first non-invasive image of microplastics beneath human skin, and a journey to the remote Peruvian Andes, where Indigenous farmers blend traditional knowledge with modern science to tackle water pollution.
Winners will be announced on 16 July 2025, followed by a free public exhibition at London’s Francis Crick Institute, running from 17 July to 18 October.
In all, 25 images are in the running for this year's top prize. Here are our favourites.
Blooming Barrier by Lucy Holland
A tissue sample that was removed from an infant who had Hirschsprung’s disease, a condition that affects the formation of goblet cells in young children and can lead to lifelong digestive health problems. - Photo Credit: Lucy Holland/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
From butterflies to humans by Amaia Alcalde Anton
This image is of the brain of a butterfly undergoing metamorphosis, where new neurons are born through a process called neurogenesis. Neurogenesis occurs in many species during development and adulthood, and studying it can provide valuable insights into how the nervous system is formed. - Photo Credit: Amaia Alcalde Anton/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
I’ve got you under my skin: microplastics in mammalian tissue by P Stephen Patrick and Olumide Ogunlade
This is the first successful non-invasive image of its kind, which shows the presence of plastic particles, visible in turquoise, deep inside a live mouse. Patrick and Ogunlade, UK-based biomedical researchers, developed a photoacoustic imaging method using lasers, and the resulting sound waves they generate when interacting with a sample to visualisethese microplastics. - Photo Credit: P. Stephen Patrick and Olumide Ogunlade/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Cholesterol in the liver by Steve Gschmeissner
This image by Steve Gschmeissner is of cholesterol crystals, in blue, within a lipid-laden liver cell, in purple, taken from a human liver. The width of the lipid droplet is 12 micrometres. - Photo Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Submarine Fever by Jander Matos and Joaquim Nascimento
This image, taken by Jander Matos and Joaquim Nascimento, researchers based in a bioimaging lab at the State University of Amazonas in Brazil, is of an egg (0.56mm wide) from an Aedes aegypti mosquito, a carrier for diseases such as dengue and Zika. The yellow details in the image show the tubercles, which allow it to attach to different surfaces and provide nutrients that allow it to survive out of water. - Photo Credit: Jander Matos and Joaquim Nascimento/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Organoid by Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottawa
This image, created by the photographer Oliver Meckes and the biologist Nicole Ottawa, is of an organoid that replicates the lining of a uterus, and it has been coloured to look as realistic as possible. The width of the organoid is 0.2mm - Photo Credit: Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottawa/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Brixton Road, Lambeth, South London by Marina Vitaglione.
This image, created by Marina Vitaglione in collaboration with scientists Paul Johnson, Laura Buchanan, Stephanie Wright and Joseph Levermore from Imperial College London’s Environmental Research Group, shows magnified pollution particles (with a diameter of 0.01 mm or less) from Brixton Road in south London, printed using the Cyanotype method. Visualising this otherwise “invisible killer”. - Photo Credit: Marina Vitaglione/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Ice and Fire Chronicles by Ingrid Augusto, Kildare Rocha de Miranda and Vania da Silva Vieira
This image shows the inner structure of Trypanosoma cruzi, or T. cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease, a tropical illness transmitted by biting insects or contaminated food. Over time, it can cause serious heart conditions and digestive issues, especially if left untreated. - Photo Credit: Ingrid Augusto, Kildare Rocha de Miranda and Vania da Silva Vieira/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Nemo’s garden by Giacomo d'Orlando
Nemo’s Garden is the world’s first underwater greenhouse system, located in Liguria, Italy and was created to research farming solutions for areas where growing plants may be challenging in the future.Giacomo d’Orlando’s photographs set out to reveal how these biospheres work. The images also highlight some of the discoveries that are being made about the plants and how they contain higher levels of antioxidants than the same plants grown on land, which could be useful in the development of new medicines. - Photo Credit: Giacomo d'Orlando/Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
This series by Slovenian documentary photographer Ciril Jazbec explores the health impacts of rapidly melting glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range, where this is threatening water supplies and contaminating rivers with the heavy metals that accumulate over centuries within glaciers. Peru is home to the majority of the world’s tropical glaciers, a crucial water source for the mountain farming communities. 40 per cent of their surface area has disappeared since the 1970s because of climate change. - Photo Credit: Ciril Jazbec / Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Stereo EEG Self-Portrait by Muir Vidler
This is a self-portrait of the UK-based photographer Muir Vidler, taken after a surgical procedure to implant electrodes into his brain. The procedure is carried out on people who have epilepsy that cannot be controlled by medication and is used to identify which area of the brain is causing the seizures. Vidler took this picture on the first day that the electrodes were inserted, and he had to keep them in for seven days. - Photo Credit: Muir Vidler / Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Searching for Life by Sandipani Chattopadhyay
This image captures a group of local people collecting water from a riverbed in Purulia, a district in West Bengal, India.Due to climate change, the monsoon season in the Indian subcontinent is becoming more irregular, which is causing rivers to dry out and many villages in this area regularly run out of drinking water. - Photo Credit: Sandipani Chattopadhyay / Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
This Is Endometriosis - Self Five Years On 2014-2022 by Georgie Wileman
This is a self-portrait taken by UK-based photographer Georgie Wileman. It documents the dates of Wileman’s scars from endometriosis surgeries. Endometriosis affects one in ten women and those assigned female at birth, and is often referred to as “painful periods”, a phrase that downplays the severity of a condition that causes internal bleeding and lesions that can damageinternal organs. Wileman’s photograph powerfully communicates the pain and isolation of living with endometriosis. - Photo Credit: Georgie Wileman / Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
This aerial picture is of the former village of Geamăna in the Lupșa area in Transylvania, Romania. In 1977, the Romanian president, Nicolae Ceaușescu, ordered the evacuation of the village’s 1,000 inhabitants to clear the way for the creation of a large lake for the storage of toxic waste from the nearby Roșia Poieni copper mines. The lake continues to grow by about 100 cm a year, and affects the quality of the local groundwater. - Photo Credit: Alexandru Popescu / Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
James Cutmore is the picture editor of BBC Science Focus Magazine. He has worked on the magazine and website for over a decade, telling compelling science stories through the use of striking imagery. He holds a degree in Fine Art, and has been nominated for the British Society of Magazine Editors Talent Awards, being highly commended in 2020. His main areas of interest include photography that highlights positive technology and the natural world. For many years he was a judge for the Wellcome Trust's image competition, as well as judging for the Royal Photographic Society.
Lily is the picture researcher across BBC Science Focus, BBC Countryfile and BBC Wildlife. She holds a degree in Photojournalism, where she specialised in social documentary reportage. Her photographic work has been shortlisted for the BarTur Photo Award’s Unity in Diversity category and exhibited internationally as part of the Urban Photo Awards. Before joining the team she worked as a fully trained product specialist in major camera brands whilst working on freelance projects.
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