{"id":749878,"date":"2026-08-26T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T03:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/749878\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T03:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T03:00:09","slug":"wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-2026-the-best-pictures-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/749878\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 \u2013 the best pictures so far"},"content":{"rendered":"

How would it feel to find yourself face to face with one of the Arctic’s most formidable predators?<\/p>\n

This stunning image captures life from a seal’s perspective. Taken by Norwegian wildlife photographer Audun Rikardsen, it was among the ‘Highly Commended’ entries in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.<\/p>\n

While working as a guide with Arctic Wildlife Tours, Rikardsen rigged an underwater camera with a motion sensor beneath a seal’s breathing hole, and then waited. At 4am, a female polar bear approached and peered down.<\/p>\n

Rikardsen then waited eight hours for the bear to move away before retrieving the camera and reviewing the images. <\/p>\n

When he saw what he had captured, he said: “I was so extremely happy. I was screaming, so I probably woke up all the polar bears for miles.”<\/p>\n

Rikardsen has previously won two Wildlife Photographer of the Year categories: Birds in 2019<\/a> and Oceans: The Bigger Picture in 2025<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The overall winners will be announced on Tuesday 13 October 2026, followed by an exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London, external<\/a> from Friday 16 October 2026.<\/p>\n

Scroll down to explore other highly commended works from the competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How would it feel to find yourself face to face with one of the Arctic’s most formidable predators?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-749878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}