ICOMOS-UK Heritage Photography Competition 2026: Images of Industrial Heritage

The second in our series of photography competitions that celebrate built and living heritage around the world, from different perspectives.

‘Images of Industrial Heritage’ – ICOMOS UK Photography Competition

To mark the launch of the ICOMOS UK Industrial Heritage Committee, this competition wants to explore changing approaches to and perceptions of industrial heritage. The competition will spotlight sites of industrial heritage, and reflect on how they are preserved, celebrated and debated.  

Why not enter our competition?  Winners will receive a print of their work, as well as a year’s membership of ICOMOS, and shortlisted images will go on display in the gallery at our Cowcross Street offices.

Images of Industrial Heritage

We invite photographers to capture images that showcase the stark beauty and surprising fragility of industrial heritage and our changing relationships with it. Or to document change in and for local communities as a result of industrialisation, deindustrialisation and the social, economic, and environmental impacts of both.

Photographs may include, but are not limited to, World Heritage Sites, other heritage sites, and places which are not formally designated as heritage at all, but which have an important story to tell. Sites can be located anywhere around the world.

There are four categories that images can be submitted for, which aim to record, celebrate or pose questions about the variety of industrial heritage and its impact on people:

  • Machinery – working or redundant engines, equipment, production lines and processes
  • Buildings & Structures – from the monumental to the fragmentary
  • Landscapes and their transformation by the presence or disappearance of industrial activity and processes
  • People and community – making, conserving, taking part, moving away

How to Enter

To enter, send a cover email with the subject ‘Photography Competition 2026’ with your name, description of the images, image credits, and attached images. Please state which category / categories you are entering. Send the email to admin@icomos-uk.org.

We also ask that entrants donate a small fee, recommended at £10. Once the images are received by our office, you will be sent a link to make a small donation.

You can submit up to five images which must be:

  • Square
  • No less than 1mb and no more than 6mb

The fee is per entrant.

Deadline: The deadline for entry is 1st September 2026

Conditions of Entry

  • Entrants can be based anywhere around the world and photographs of any historic site globally will be accepted.
  • Entrants are asked to make a donation with a suggested donation of £10.00.
  • The maximum number of photographs accepted per person will be 5.
  • ICOMOS-UK will retain the right to use the images submitted as part of the competition to promote their work and for use in association with news and articles, including on the ICOMOS website. You will retain copyright and your work will always be credited and will never be used for commercial purposes or passed to third parties.

Judging Panel

Deniz Beck, ICOMOS UK Trustee and chair of the judging panel. Deniz is a conservation architect whose work embraces community engagement in the repurposing of historic buildings. She led ICOMOS UK’s first photographic competition in 2025.

Neil Horsley, author of Mills Transformed, which documents the renovation and repurposing of over thirty mills in the North of England – a project about the people who inspired their transformation, as well as about the buildings themselves.

Dr Hilary Orange, Senior Lecturer in Heritage at Swansea University and a member of ICOMOS UK’s Industrial Heritage Committee, whose work explores the intersections between memorialisation, identity and contested heritage places

Awards & Exhibiting

  • Award winners will be announced at an ICOMOS-UK event, provisionally in the autumn of 2026
  • The winning entries will receive a prize of a year’s free ICOMOS membership and a print of their photograph.
  • All shortlisted entries will be featured on ICOMOS-UK’s social media
  • Winners will be featured in an exhibition at the Cowcross Street Gallery, London, and in an edition of our e-journal, ICOMOS Insight