A tram conductor in Kolkata, India, wears protective clothing from head to toe in the heat of a summer afternoon, during the Covid-19 pandemic. 
Credit:

Sudipto Das / Wellcome Photography Prize 2021

Licence: All Rights Reserved

A tram conductor in Kolkata, India, wears protective clothing from head to toe in the heat of a summer afternoon, during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Wellcome Image Awards and Wellcome Photography Prize

The world faces huge health challenges, and we at Wellcome support science that can find ways to solve these. But we also want to change the way people think about health around the world and to inspire new action. We believe that remarkable visual stories can bring these issues to life. 

On this page you'll find links to the shortlisted and winning images from the Wellcome Image Awards and the Wellcome Photography Prize.

Wellcome Image Awards: 1997–2018  

The Wellcome Image Awards, originally launched as the Wellcome Biomedical Image Awards, were established in 1997 to reward contributors to the Wellcome Images collection, one of Wellcome’s major picture libraries. Submissions to the awards were judged by a panel and the winning images were displayed in galleries and science centres across the UK and around the world. All winning images were then accepted into Wellcome Images’ collections, which is available to the public. 

Browse the winning images from the Wellcome Image Awards. 

Wellcome Photography Prize: 2019 – ongoing 

After 20 years, the Wellcome Image Awards underwent a major change in 2018 (for launch in 2019), rebranding as the Wellcome Photography Prize. In its new format, the prize is open to photographers from all areas – both professional and amateur – and aims to highlight stories of health, medicine and science that align with Wellcome's research programmes. Each year, a commission is developed alongside the competition, featuring the work of one or more photographers and focusing on a specific theme. 

Browse the shortlisted and winning images for each year below.

Browse the annual commissions from the Wellcome Photography Prize.