The Leica Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA) will be awarded for the 45th time in 2025. This year the world-renowned photography contest is being celebrated as part of the Leica Centenary celebrations under the banner of “100 Years of Leica: Witness to a Century”.
The Leica Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA) was first presented in 1980 and has developed into an important forum for showcasing socially engaged, contemporary photography. The search for this year’s award winners is based on nominations from an international council of nominators.
Naming the members of this year’s international jury
To receive a nomination for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award the photo series must include works of documentary or conceptual photography that explore the relationship between humanity and the environment.
The Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer category, was added alongside the main category in 2009 and recognises photographers aged under 30. It is being bestowed once again in collaboration with 20 international institutions and universities from 17 countries, which are nominating artists.
The LOBA Award has remained true to this humanistic endeavour since it first came into being in 1979. That year, Oskar Barnack, the inventor of the Ur-Leica, after whom the award is named, would have turned 100.
120 photographers from 50 countries
Over 120 photography experts from around 50 countries will have put forward their nominations for this year, before the final jury meets. Every nominator selects one to three photo series with 15 to 20 images based on their personal expertise and experience.
The jury will have meet at Leica Camera AG’s headquarters in Wetzlar during April to choose the LOBA winners from a shortlist of at most twelve series. The final decisions regarding the LOBA winners for both the main and newcomer categories will then be made by the five-person jury drawn from a shortlist of nominations for 2025.
This year’s jury
As in the past, an entirely new jury is selected each year, and this year’s LOBA cohort are getting to work as the contest enters the decisive preparatory phase.
This year, the jury includes:
- Jane Evelyn Atwood, Photographer and 1997 LOBA winner (USA/France)
- Cyril Drouhet, Deputy Director of Photography for Le Figaro Magazine (France)
- Felix Hoffmann, Curator at Foto Arsenal Vienna (Austria)
- Curt Holtz, Photography and Architecture Editor at Prestel Publishing (Germany)
- Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Art Director and Chief Representative of Leica Galleries International (Austria)
The awards
The reputation of the LOBA has been growing steadily. It is among the most important international photography awards, not least because of the financial support it provides. The winner of the main prize receives €40,000, as well as Leica camera equipment worth €10,000; and the winner of the Newcomer Award receives €10,000 and a Leica Q3.
In addition, the winning series, together with those on the LOBA shortlist, will be presented in a touring exhibition that will initially be shown at the Ernst Leitz Museum Wetzlar in October. This is where the award ceremony will take place. Afterwards, the series will be exhibited at Leica Galleries and select photography festivals worldwide.
The series by both winners and all shortlist candidates will also be presented in detail in an accompanying catalogue. From mid-July onwards, the series by all shortlist candidates will be displayed on the LOBA website. In October 2025, the announcement of the prize winners and award ceremony for both categories will take place in Wetzlar.
Discover more:
| Leica Oskar Barnack Award | LOBA 2024/The Nominators |
| Learn about the Leica Centennial | Leica Society International |
| The Leica Society (UK) | Leica Fellowship (UK) |
| Leica Cameras |
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