Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

Masked Guggen music bands parade through the streets on the occasion of the beginning of the Fasnacht Carnival of Lucerne, Switzerland, early 23 February 2017. (Photo by Urs Flueeler/EPA)

Almost two years old male baby orang-utan Dalai looks on in the zoo in Dresden, Germany, 30 March 2017. Dalai was born to mother Daisy in June 2016. (Photo by Filip Singer/EPA)

Eight year-old Maya Mohammad Ali Merhi walks using prosthetic legs made by her father from tin cans in a camp for displaced people, in the northern Syrian province of Idlib on June 20, 2018. Maya and her father were both born without lower limbs. Unable to afford real prosthetic limbs, her father made her a pair out of tin cans filled with cotton and scrap pieces of cloth. Maya's family had to leave their home in the Aleppo province to flee battles. (Photo by Aaref Watad/AFP Photo)

Sukhoi Su-30SM jet fighters of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) aerobatic team perform during a demonstration flight in Krasnoyarsk, Russia October 6, 2018. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A man looks at a car hit by a post after a tornado ripped through a neighbourhood in Havana, Cuba on January 28, 2019. (Photo by Fernando Medina/Reuters)

Delta CEO Ed Bastian talks about the century-old airline's past and technology such as generative artificial intelligence that he sees shaping its future during a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) presentation at The Sphere concert venue in Las Vegas on January 7, 2025. Delta on January 7 marked a century of flying with visions of a future in which artificial intelligence and internet age partnerships make air travel fun and seamless. (Photo by Glenn Chapman/AFP Photo)

A tiger enjoys frozen food at Rome Zoological Garden “Bioparco” during a heat wave in Rome on July 2, 2025. (Photo by Tiziana Fabi/AFP Photo)