The 2026 iPhone Photography Awards, announced Wednesday, showcase stunning photos captured with iPhone cameras, anchored by this year's Grand Prix-winning night photo of a volcano, taken with an iPhone 15 Pro by Robyn Jensen. 

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Whenever photos taken with phones gain attention, well-meaning people trot out photographer Chase Jarvis's adage, "The best camera is the one you have with you." But that much-cited quote is often delivered with the unspoken context of, "I guess an iPhone is better than nothing at all, but the photo would have been better if you had a real camera with you."

But the photos in this year's collection never feel like compromises. Without peeping at the pixel level, you wouldn't know that nearly all of the images came from Apple's smartphones. Only a couple of them look like "iPhone photos" to my eye.

The awards prove that you don't need the most current iPhone model to make great images. The photo that won First Place overall, a black-and-white photo of children in the sun interrupted by the shadow of a badminton racket, was captured by Gellert Gombai with a camera likely older than its subjects: an iPhone X, released in 2017.

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In fact, only seven of the 40 winning photos in the main categories, excluding honorable mentions, were made with the current iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 17 Pro Max.

"When we started, people were still discovering what this device could do," said IPPAwards founder Kenan Aktulun via email. "There was a real sense of experimentation, of testing the limits of something new. Twenty years on, that curiosity hasn't gone anywhere, but it's matured. This year's winners aren't showing us what the phone can do. They're showing us what they can see. The work has become quieter, more intentional and far more human."

The competition rules stipulate that photos must be shot using an iPhone or iPad and not edited in Photoshop on a desktop computer, but can be edited using apps on the device. Images compete in 12 categories, including Abstract, Portrait, Landscape and Animals. Each candidate requires a $9.50 entry fee.

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At the IPPAwards site, each photo lists the iPhone model used, the camera it was captured with and exposure details such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO value. So it's impossible to know which images were made using the built-in Camera app versus a third-party app, or how much editing has been applied -- all things we never consider when looking at the works of photographers using traditional cameras.

It's still noteworthy to single out phone-captured photos, as the iPhone Photography Awards does. Phone cameras remain technically limited in terms of sensor size and lens quality compared to many traditional cameras (even sophisticated camera systems like the Leitzphone).

But this collection brings to mind the words of another well-known connoisseur. As food critic Anton Ego remarks in the movie Ratatouille: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

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To view the winners and a selection of honorable mentions, view the gallery below, then go to the IPPAwards site to view the entire 2026 collection.