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)

Picture show a 39-foot whale that was crushed to death hanging lifelessly over the bow of a tanker in Japan. Horrified locals caught sight of the whale as the ship pulled into the harbour of Kurashiki last month, September 2021. (Photo by Newsflash)

UEFA staff member carry away the trophy from the pitch prior the UEFA Champions League semi-final football match between Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain at the Luz stadium in Lisbon on August 18, 2020. (Photo by David Ramos/Pool via AFP Photo)

A policeman stops a cyclist as demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest during the NATO Summit by blocking the A12 highway in The Hague, The Netherlands, 25 June 2025. The Netherlands, for the first time in NATO's history of existence, is hosting a NATO summit. (Photo by Sebastiaan Barel/EPA)

People take part in the Classic Ride Rally in downtown Valencia, eastern Spain, 23 November 2014. Some hundred people on classic bikes from the 20's to the 70's participated in the rally. (Photo by Kai Foersterling/EPA)

WWII veterans attend a ceremony to place tobacco pouches of soil from WWII mass graves of Red Army soldiers abroad, in the custody of the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow, Russia on March 6, 2020. The grave soil has been brought from Abkhazia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, US, Ukraine, France, Estonia, Mongolia, Bulgaria, UK, Uzbekistan and South Ossetia. (Photo by Alexander Shcherbak/TASS)

Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Jaqueline Rodriguez subdues a simulated suspect after being sprayed with oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray during security training aboard the amphibious dock landing ship USS Comstock (LSD 45). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joseph M. Buliavac/Released). May 10, 2011

North Korean military participate in the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on early October 11, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/KCNA)