Free photo contests for 2027: who can enter without a fee

Three contests in our verified records let everyone enter free for the 2027 season: the Sony World Photography Awards 2027, the World Sports Photography Awards 2027 and the RPS International Photography Exhibition 168, which takes one single image free from every entrant. Three more waive their fee for some entrants: Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2027, Bird Photographer of the Year 2027 and the World Food Photography Awards 2027. All six ban AI-generated images, and all six take a licence to use what you enter, so the rules are worth reading even when the entry costs nothing.

Free for everyone

Sony World Photography Awards 2027. The organiser says the awards have “championed inclusivity and access by being free to enter” since the beginning. Series takes five to ten images per category; Student, for entrants aged 18 to 30 on a photography programme, takes five to ten on the brief “Journeys”; Single Image is for images taken in 2026, and anyone who wants to enter more than three in Single Image or Youth can “Buy image bundles”. The Sony deadlines are at 16:00 GMT, except that the Student rules also say entries must be uploaded by 13:00 GMT on 27 November. Every entry must start from a photograph: “Computer generated content cannot be the origin of the Entry.” The full timetable is in Sony World Photography Awards 2027 deadlines.

World Sports Photography Awards 2027. The entry page lists the cost as “Free of charge”. The rules state: “All images entries must be created with a camera; no synthetic or AI-generated images are allowed, and using AI-powered generative fill will result in automatic disqualification from the awards.”

RPS International Photography Exhibition 168. The terms say: “One free single image entry is available to everyone”. Further entries, a series of four images or four single images, cost £35, or £27 for RPS members and £20 for entrants under 30. Entry is “open to anyone, of any age or level of practice”, and “Work that includes generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in whole, or in part, is not eligible for submission.”

Free for some entrants

Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s residency waiver applies to applicants who “can provide evidence of residency on request”. Bird Photographer of the Year’s rules say: “Entries in the Youth Competition do not require the purchase of Entry Credits.” World Food’s terms say entry to the Jamie Oliver Youth Prize and RPS Student categories “is free of charge”, and its fees page says entry to the UK for UNHCR Food as Home category “is free of charge”.

What a free entry still grants

All three free-for-everyone contests leave the copyright with the photographer, and all three take a licence over what you enter:

• Sony World Photography Awards: a non-exclusive licence over every entered image for uses connected with the awards, including sub-licensing to the press, for three years after the April 2027 announcement. The Student rules also keep an older clause that grants the licence in perpetuity, and the Single Image and Youth rules say an image included in the awards’ gallery apps on partner devices “will remain perpetually in the device royalty free”.
• World Sports Photography Awards: “By entering the competition, you grant World Sports Photography Awards, its sponsors, partners and media licensees a non-exclusive, irrevocable licence to reproduce, enlarge, publish or exhibit all submitted images in any media throughout the world at any time hereafter for any purpose directly connected with the awards.”
• RPS: “Entrants licence the RPS to reproduce, without payment, any images for publicity and promotion purposes in connection with the International Photography Exhibition and the RPS’s activities, including within the RPS Journal, website, and social media, for a period up to four years from the date of the open-call launching.”

Each contest’s record page shows its licence terms. The free contests list updates as records change. This replaces our 2026 list of free contests: the contests here are only those whose rules we have checked against the organisers’ own pages. For a free contest we don’t list, the Terms Check quotes its licence and AI rule from the rules page.

Questions

Is the Sony World Photography Awards free to enter?

Yes. All four competitions are free; in Single Image and Youth you can enter up to three images free, and both sell image bundles for more.

Is Wildlife Photographer of the Year free to enter?

For some entrants. It is free for the Young competition, for entrants aged 18 to 26 on 3 December 2026 and for residents of the countries the rules list; other adults pay £35, once, for up to 25 photographs.

Do free photo contests take rights to your photos?

The three free contests here leave you the copyright and take a licence over your entries. It runs up to four years from the open call’s launch at the RPS, three years after the April 2027 announcement at Sony (the Student rules also keep a perpetual clause, and in Single Image and Youth an image placed in the awards’ gallery apps stays on partner devices perpetually), and with no end date at the World Sports Photography Awards.

Do free photo contests allow AI images?

None of the six on this page does. The World Sports Photography Awards, Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Bird Photographer of the Year have strict bans; Sony, the RPS and World Food ban AI-generated images and allow editing tools.

Sources

Checked against the organisers’ pages on 13 October 2026:

• Sony World Photography Awards, with its Series, Single Image, Student and Youth pages
• World Sports Photography Awards entry page, rules and terms and conditions
• RPS IPE 168 terms and conditions
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition page and rules
• Bird Photographer of the Year rules
• World Food Photography Awards entry terms, fees and FAQs

The licence summaries come from our records and were checked against each organiser’s licence terms on 13 October 2026.