After a long time renovation project, the old town in Taiyuan city which was founded in 1357, finally lights up and opens to public in Taiyuan City, north China's Shanxi Province, 23 November 2020. (Photo by Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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)

People view an installation over a lake that forms part of the Enchanted Forest Winter Illuminations at Stockeld Park in Wetherby, North Yorkshire on Monday, November 14, 2022. Light effects, a captivating soundscape, and animated installations come together in the ancient woodland once a year over the Christmas period. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Images via Getty Images)

A festival goer spins a light strip as she dances to electronic music in front of the Belleville stage during the 45th edition of the Paleo Festival, in Nyon, Switzerland, 24 July 2022. The Paleo is the largest open-air music festival in the western part of Switzerland. (Photo by Valentin Flauraud/EPA/EFE)

Torchbearers Charles Antoine Kouakou, Fabien Lamirault, Elodie Lorandi, Nantenin Keita and Alexis Hanquinquant gesture after lighting the Cauldron to conclude the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games at Place de la Concorde on August 28, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

A person lights fire crackers during the celebrations of Mawlid al-Nabi, the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad, in Hyderabad, Pakistan, 04 September 2025. Mawlid is observed on the 12th day of Rabi al-Awwal (the third month of the Islamic calendar) in Sunni Islam and on the 17th day in Shiite Islam. (Photo by Nadeem Khawar/EPA)

Hadeel, 10, asks a passerby for help to pay a medical bill as her father Shahrour, 54, sits in his wheelchair in the Douma neighbourhood of Damascus Syria February 3, 2016. Shahrour said he developed diabetes at the beginning of the war in Syria. A lack of insulin led to his medical condition worsening and his right foot had to be amputated. Recently he also suffered a stroke that paralysed half his face. He and part of his extended family, a total of 18 people, live together and struggle to get by. (Photo by Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)

A pro-democracy protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds a yellow umbrella and a banner in the part of Hong Kong's financial central district protesters are occupying November 2, 2014. The former British colony of Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, has witnessed a month of protests calling on the Beijing-backed government to keep its promise of introducing universal suffrage. The protests have for the most part been peaceful, with occasional clashes between the student-led protesters and Beijing supporters seeking to move them from the streets. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)