Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People’s Choice Award Winner crowned for Iberian lynx image

Austrian photographer Josef Stefan has been crowned the winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award 2026 for an image of young Iberian lynx playfully hunting.

The award, run by the Natural History Museum in London, selected Stefan’s photograph from 23 shortlisted images chosen out of 60,636 entries from 113 countries.

Stefan’s image, titled Flying Rodent, captured a young Iberian lynx in Ciudad Real, Spain, playfully tossing a rodent for 20 minutes before it got bored and carried it behind a nearby bush to devour it.

While it’s common for lynxes to play with their prey before eating, Stefan explained that this one repeatedly threw the rodent high in the air and caught it again.

To him, and to many viewers, it looks as if the rodent can fly.

The Iberian lynx is a living symbol of hope

Stefan described the win as the highlight of his photographic career.

“The journey to take this image was more than just another photographic adventure. It was the pursuit of a dream: encountering the Iberian lynx, one of the rarest and most endangered wild cats in the world. Winning this award and being able to platform this message is the highlight of my 30 years as a nature photographer.”

“The Iberian lynx is a living symbol of hope, showing what can happen when we take responsibility, act consciously and focus our attention where it’s most needed.”

While the Wildlife Photographer of the Year announced the winners of its prestigious awards in October 2025, the results of the People’s Choice Award were announced on March 25.

After a series of intense voting sessions over a month, the photos were chosen by an international judging panel of photography, wildlife, conservation, and science experts.

Many of the highly commended images in the People’s Choice Award were more sombre in tone, focusing on the plight of wildlife as human’s infiltrate their habitats.

Will Nicholls was highly commended for his photograph titled Dancing in the Headlights, displaying a pair of bear cubs silhouetted against the headlights of a car while they play in Jasper National Park, Canada.

Another highly commended photograph hailing from Canada was Family Rest by Christopher Paetkau, showing a mother polar bear with her three cubs snuggling up together in the summer heat after making the long journey north along the Hudson Bay coast.

As shrinking sea ice makes it tougher for polar bears to find food in summer, the image spotlights a fleeting moment of maternal hope where survival is anything but certain.

The dichotomy of wildlife surviving amongst human-made structures couldn’t be more stark than in Alexandre Brisson’s highly commended photograph titled Beauty Against the Beast.

Brisson captured the photo in Walvis Bay, Namibia, after a 10-hour drive at dusk.

Brisson described that the smell from a nearby open-air dump was overwhelming, a sharp contrast to the beauty of the group of flamingos. When two of them took off, their graceful flight stood out against the backdrop.

Kohei Nagira’s image titled Never-ending Struggle was highly commended for his photograph taken on Notsuke Peninsula in Hokkaido, Japan, showing life and death bound together.

The image captures a sika deer carrying the interlocked severed head of a rival male that had died after their battle.

In autumn, male sika deer fight over females by clashing their antlers. While the deer in the image won the fight, their antlers became tightly locked and wouldn’t come apart.

A local fisherman says the deer dragged the whole body for several days before finally tearing off its head.

Kohei observed the deer on Notsuke Peninsula in Hokkaido, Japan, from late November 2020 to April 2021. It was living alone, yet it continued to forage for grass and branches and managed to survive the winter.

The winning and the runners-up images will be displayed at the Natural History Museum, London, until the exhibition closes on July 12, 2026.