Some of the most compelling press images captured across the globe over the past year will be showcased at an exhibition at Queen Maeve Square in Sligo, due to open later today.<\/p>\n
The World Press Photo exhibition hosted by Sligo County Council is a flagship event of Ireland\u2019s cultural programme for its Presidency of the Council of the European Union.<\/p>\n
The free walk-through exhibition will be displayed on 16 scaffolding towers at Queen Maeve Square from 14 August to 11 September.<\/p>\n
Self-guided tours will be available via QR codes in multiple languages detailing the stories behind 118 images from the annual World Press Photo Contest.<\/p>\n
View: Click through images in our gallery below<\/p>\n
Last year, the contest attracted 57,376 entries from 3,747 photographers in 141 countries. Some 42 winners were selected.<\/p>\n
The overall winner of the World Press Photo of the Year 2026 was an image ‘Separated by ICE\u2019 captured by Carol Guzy for the Miami Herald.<\/p>\n
The image was taken inside a Federal Building in New York, one of the few US federal buildings where photographers were granted access.<\/p>\n
It shows the separation of a family by state agents following the detention of an Ecuadorian migrant by US immigration agents after a court hearing last August.<\/p>\n
An Ecuadorian migrant, whom his family says has no criminal record and served as the household\u2019s sole provider, was taken from his wife and children.<\/p>\n
Photographer Carol Guzy said the award highlights the importance of the story worldwide.<\/p>\n
“We bear witness to the suffering of countless families, but also to their grace and resilience that transcends adversity that has been quite humbling,” she said.<\/p>\n
Executive director of World Press Photo Joumana El Zein Khoury said the image shows the grief of children losing their father in a place, she said was “built for justice”.<\/p>\n
She said the image is a stark and necessary record of family separation following US reform policies and “a powerful example of why independent photojournalism matters”.<\/p>\n
The two finalists of the annual World Press Photo were \u2018Aid Emergency in Gaza\u2019 by Saber Nuraldin and \u2018The Trials of the Achi Women\u2019 by Victor J Blue.<\/p>\n
\u2018Aid Emergency in Gaza\u2019 show Palestinians climbing onto an aid truck entering Gaza via the Zikim Crossing to get flour.<\/p>\n
The image was captured during what the Israeli military called a “tactical suspension” in operations to allow humanitarian aid through on 27 July 2025.<\/p>\n
The World Press Photo Jury said the image renders visible the scale and urgency of famine in the second year of the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Photographer Saber Nuraldin who captured it, was born in Gaza and has documented life there since 1997.<\/p>\n
The World Press Photo Organisation has said more than half of approximately 94 journalists who were killed on duty across 15 countries last year, died in Palestine.<\/p>\n
Guatemala\u2019s civil war led to the genocide of thousands of Maya Achi people by the military and local state-backed paramilitary forces in northern Central America.<\/p>\n
The other finalist ‘The Trials of the Achi Women’ by Victor J Blue, for The New York Times Magazine shows, Do\u00f1a Paulina Ixpat\u00e1 Alvarado, a plaintiff who was held captive and assaulted with fellow Achi women outside a Guatemala City court.<\/p>\n
Three former civil defence patrollers in Guatemala were sentenced to 40 years in prison for rape and crimes against humanity on 30 May 2025.<\/p>\n
For four decades, a group of Indigenous Maya Achi women lived in the same communities as the men who had raped them.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years ago, 36 women broke their silence, launching and winning a 14-year legal battle against their abusers.<\/p>\n
The World Press Photo jury commented that the portrait documented a moment of collective strength at the conclusion of a long struggle for justice.<\/p>\n
They said the photograph\u2019s classical, restrained approach emphasises the women’s dignity and authority, deliberately countering what they described as historical narratives that frame survivors of sexual violence as powerless subjects.<\/p>\n
The exhibition, hosted in Sligo, will be the only Irish stop for the 2026 edition and the first time the exhibition has come to Ireland since 2014.<\/p>\n
The World Press Photo, founded in the Netherlands in 1955, is an independent non-profit organisation that champions photojournalism and documentary photography.<\/p>\n
The organisation said the stories contained in the exhibition illuminate the realities faced across the globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the most compelling press images captured across the globe over the past year will be showcased…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-592816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}