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citiestobe photo award
‘Alternative landscape‘
by Ghazaleh Yazdanparast Tehrani (Iran)
The CitiesToBe Photo Award
A triennial international urban photography competition
inviting photographers who explore cities
in all their complexity, contradiction and everyday possibility.
By CitiesToBe, Anteverti's urban think lab
We created the CitiesToBe Photo Award in 2019 from a conviction that has guided our work from the beginning: that artistic creation is one of the most powerful ways to understand, question and reimagine contemporary urban life.
Through the CitiesToBe Photo Award, we support photographers who place the city at the centre of their practice, and we give visibility to work that moves beyond surface narratives to reveal what cities actually are — not as infrastructure or backdrop, but as lived, contested, layered experience.
Works from previous editions of the CitiesToBe Photo Award: Nathalie Daoust (winner, CTBPA 2023) · Roman Demyanenko (winner, CTBPA 2020) · Olesia Kim · Gianluca Cecere · Benedetta Ristori · Manuel Álvarez Diestro (CTBPA 2020–2023)
The 26 Edition: Call Closed!
The third edition focuses, for the first time, on a specific theme: the role of 'third places' in the contemporary city — the informal, collective spaces beyond home and work where urban life truly unfolds.
For the first time, it recognises photographic projects — sustained visual narratives of 10 to 20 images — rather than single photographs.
The call closed on October 10, 2026. Winners will be announced in December.
Learn more about the CTBPA26
Previous Editions
The inaugural edition, in 2020, received 533 photographs from more than 60 countries. The second, in 2023, drew 1,189 submissions from 94 countries — confirming the award's growing reach and the breadth of perspectives it brings together. Together, the two editions form a visual archive that keeps expanding: a record of how cities are being seen, felt and questioned right now, across the world.
The third edition launched in June 2026. For the first time, it was thematic, and for the first time it recognised not single images, but photographic projects: sustained visual narratives that go deeper into their subject. The call closed in October, and the winners will be announced in December.
Explore the editions archive below.
citiestobe photo award 23
“In the shadow of the big city”Nathalie Daoust (Canada)