Storm Photos of the Year

Our Sponsors:

6th Annual Storm Photography Contest!

The first true storm photography contest! Cannot believe it’s been six years now. Our purpose in creating Storm Photos of the Year, or what we affectionately call “The Stormys”, is to reward incredible storm photographers around the globe for their hard work every year with a photography contest made specifically for them! From Australia to Italy to Canada to Argentina to the United States and a million other places, storm photographers are capturing astounding images that deserve to be recognized.

We also are out to break the mold of other photography contests out there, which is to lock you into horrific terms of use agreements so that you are terrified your image will end up on a billboard somewhere solely because you entered it into a contest.

The images are yours. Not ours. Our only hope is to use them to promote you, your work and our little contest here. That’s the end of the story. You can read our entire rules and guidelines.

Finally, we are proud of our judges. They know storms. They chase storms. They are photographers themselves. They know what it takes to get the images you are submitting and what makes them special.

We can’t wait to see what you send our way!

Learn More

The Categories for 2026

Storm Photo of the Year

$600 Grand Prize / Trophy / 20×30 Metal Print of Winning Photo / WeatherFront Membership / Tempest WeatherFlow

$200 Second Place
$100 Third Place

The single, best photo of 2025. All photos submitted to this category will be reviewed for the short list, narrowed down to 30 Selections that will be critiqued on video, then cut down to 10 Finalists, again critiqued on video and finally the winner will be announced. Submit as many images as you like!

Storm Photographer of the Year

$600 Grand Prize / Trophy / 20×30 Metal Print of Winning Photo / WeatherFront Membership

$200 Second Place
$100 Third Place

This award encompasses a body of work produced in 2025. Photographers will submit 10 images, captured on at least SEVEN different dates, to showcase the best of their portfolio for that year. Entries will be narrowed down to 12 Selections that will be critiqued on video, cut down to the 6 Finalists, again critiqued on video and finally the winner will be announced. Only one submission per photographer.

Tornado Photo of the Year

$500 Grand Prize / Trophy / 20×30 Metal Print of Winning Photo / WeatherFront Membership

$200 Second Place
$100 Third Place

The best tornado photo of 2025. All photos submitted to this category will be reviewed for the short list, narrowed down to 30 Selections that will be critiqued, then cut down to 10 Finalists, again critiqued on video and finally the winner will be announced. Submit as many images as you like!

Lightning Photo of the Year

$400 Grand Prize / Trophy

This is anything lightning related from 2025, from sprites, to spider lightning, in-cloud, upward and of course, cloud-to-ground. It was incredible to see all the astounding lightning images from around the world!

Photojournalism Award

$100 Grand Prize / K&F Camera Bag /

This was a new category for 2025. We want to expand our contest to other categories to not limit the photographers out there who capture images unplanned, on the run, from inside the car, people in the foreground, storm damage and more. It’s a broad topic and we are curious to see what kind of images we will receive again this year.

Solar Storm/Aurora Award

$300 Grand Prize

This was a new category for 2025 and it’s back for 2026! With all the crazy activity the last two years with the Aurora being seen incredibly far south, the amount of stunning photography has been out of this world! Experimental for this year, we’ll see how it goes! Only photos taken in 2025!

The Basic Rules

All Photos Must Have Been Taken in 2025
RAW files will be required before finalists announced.
No composites, digital art or stacks are allowed at this time. Panoramas are okay!

please read full rules and terms

The Judges

For 2025, we have our three main judges, Mike, Jennifer and Dennis. Also maybe a few guest judges along the way! Being a part of our contest as a judge requires a lot of work, between the critiques and voting, so we are eternally grateful to them for helping out!