Pinu Rahman wins HIPA's US$200,000 grand prize in Dubai

By Grace Kim

Pinu Rahman of Bangladesh won the US$200,000 grand prize at the 15th season of the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA), taking the top honor from a US$1 million (£749,300/A$1,456,000) prize pool at Dubai’s Museum of the Future.

“Under the Same Sky” shows a family of five sleeping side by side inside the surviving concrete walls of their Dhaka home after a November 2025 fire that destroyed some 1,500 dwellings. Rahman captured the image with a DJI Mavic 3 Pro camera drone.

The announcement names that drone model but supplies no flight-time, sensor or editing specifications, so the win offers no measured basis for pricing aerial assignments or comparing production workflows.

The winning frame and the judging panel

The grand prize could come from any category, and HIPA’s panel included award-winning visual editor Kurt Mutchler, landscape photographer Ivan Pedretti, award-winning photojournalist Tara Todras-Whitehill and Sami Alramyan, a Kuwaiti photographer, documentary and humanitarian photography consultant.

Ali Bin Thalith, HIPA’s secretary general, said the season’s theme, “Family,” followed UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s directive designating 2026 as the “Year of the Family.” He said: “This initiative aims to strengthen family bonds, support social stability and instil authentic Emirati values in future generations.”

What does HIPA’s prize structure change for working photographers?

The practical answer is cash without an entry fee, alongside a clear split between AI-generated and conventional submissions. HIPA charges nothing to enter and reports more than one million photograph submissions over 15 seasons; the announcement says other international contests may draw larger image volumes.

Portfolio (Story-Telling) entrants must submit 5-10 photographs that tell one story. That production requirement raises the labor commitment beyond a single-frame entry, although the filing fee is zero; the announcement reports no follow-on commissions for any winner.

HIPA calls the contest the world’s richest photography competition and says its purse exceeds those of other international awards. The announcement provides no comparative prize table, so studios should treat that ranking as an organizer claim, not a benchmark.

Payments announced in Dubai:

• Grand Prize: US$200,000 (£148,700/A$289,000), Pinu Rahman, Bangladesh.
• Photography Appreciation Award: US$100,000 (£74,410/A$144,500), Kazuyoshi Nomachi, Japan.
• HIPA Photographer of the Year: US$80,000 (£59,500/A$115,600), Véronique De Viguerie, France.
• Photography Content Creator Award: US$50,000 (£37,200/A$72,300), Dr Ali Mohamad, Syrian Arab Republic.
• Portfolio (Story-Telling): US$50,000 (£37,200/A$72,300), Yousef Alzanoon, Palestinian Territory.
• Family, Sports Photography, General (Colour), General (Black and White) and Dreams Through AI: US$40,000 (£29,700/A$58,000) each.

The US$40,000 winners were Hamid Obaid Al Ali, United Arab Emirates, for Family; Filip Hrebenda, Slovakia, for General (Colour); Jono Allen, Australia, for General (Black and White); Hongbin Wu, China, for Sports Photography; and Chi Hui Tang, New Zealand, for Dreams Through AI. Al Ali’s winning Family image captured a tender moment of parental devotion.

HIPA said Nomachi’s lifelong catalogue acts as a macro-study of the global human family, capturing resilient bonds between peoples and their lands. The jury conferred the Content Creator Award on Dr Mohamad after a submission and nomination process; HIPA described him as a photographer, documentary filmmaker, educator and entrepreneur driven by visual storytelling and the creative industries.

De Viguerie has worked in conflict zones for more than 20 years. HIPA says “war itself is not her subject,” and adds: “What interests her is what survives within it: desire, humour, beauty, absurdity, tenderness, resistance and the rhythms of ordinary life.”

Where AI fits—and where it does not

Dreams Through AI, new for the 15th season, was the only category accepting AI-generated images. Every other category required a written declaration confirming that no AI tools or software helped create the images, so photographers must know what touched an image before signing that declaration.

The submission roster covers General colour and black-and-white subcategories, Portfolio (Story-Telling), Sports, Dreams Through AI and the season’s Family theme. Grand-prize eligibility extended across every category, including the AI category.

For agencies and independents, the next test is HIPA’s ability to retain more than one million submissions while sustaining these cash awards, because the announcement documents prizes rather than client demand or paid assignments.