Young dancers perform in a ballet adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” during the Baghdad Ballet Academy's annual gala at Rasheed Theatre in Baghdad on August 29, 2025. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)

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)

A car rolls south along the Dalton Highway near Coldfoot, Alaska, USA, 03 September 2017. Stretching 414 miles (666 kilometers) north from central Alaska to Prudhoe Bay, the Dalton Highway is one of America's northernmost roads and arguably its most remote. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

Dancers perform during the Navam Perahera at the Gangaramaya Temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 15, 2022. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Garbage, including plastic waste, is seen at the beach of Costa del Este, in Panama City, on April 19, 2021. Every two weeks, Marine Biology students descend about five meters in the sea to take care of a coral nursery of the staghorn species (Acropora cervicornis) in Portobelo, Panama, with which they aim to restore reefs damaged by climate change and pollution, as part of the Reef2Reef project. (Photo by Luis Acosta/AFP Photo)

Widows, who have been abandoned by their families, light sparklers after offering prayers on the banks of the river Yamuna as part of Diwali celebrations organised by non-governmental organisation Sulabh International in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh October 21, 2014. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

Dancers from Cuba's National Ballet rehearse under the leadership of U.S. choreographer Jessica Lang as they prepare next month's International Ballet Festival in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, September 1, 2022. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)