Mobile photography continues its ascent, and Oppo is once again staking its claim at the forefront. The Chinese tech giant has officially launched the Oppo Photography Awards 2025, its annual competition celebrating creativity, emotional storytelling, and the evolving potential of camera phones.
This year’s edition arrives with its most ambitious scope to date, with a broader category lineup, a record prize pool and a renewed focus on human-centered visual narratives.
Built around the theme 'Super Every Moment', the competition encourages photographers to find the extraordinary in everyday life. It’s a sentiment that resonates across the eight entry categories – Snapshot, Youth, Live Photo, Connection, Portrait, Vibe, Photo Series, and Environment – each aimed at revealing the beauty, spontaneity, and emotional weight of life and the human condition.
Having experienced Oppo’s imaging system firsthand, using an Oppo handset while at Paris Photo last year, I can attest to its impressive capabilities. Sharp rendering, cinematic bokeh, and rich color depth gave the phone’s images a resonance usually reserved for bigger glass.
It was at Paris Photo, too, that Oppo’s gallery of winning images from the previous year’s Awards stood out. Among the esteemed walls of prints and curated booths, the selection offered a compelling glimpse into mobile photography’s rising stature.
This year’s Awards build on that momentum, with submissions now open to Oppo and OnePlus phone users worldwide until November 20 2025. In line with its expanded ambition, Oppo has introduced its largest-ever prize structure.
The top prize, the coveted Gold Award, includes $25,000 (around £18,800 / AU$38,600) in cash alongside the latest Oppo flagship devices. Three Silver Award winners will each receive $11,000 (£8,200 / AU$17,000) and a flagship phone, while six Bronze Awards come with $2,800 (£2,100 / AU$4,300) and a device to match.
Further cash prizes will be distributed across the competition’s eight categories, ensuring that a broad spectrum of talent and vision is recognized.
To ensure a robust and diverse evaluation process, the competition will be judged by a panel of internationally acclaimed photographers. Among them are Magnum’s Alec Soth, Hasselblad Masters Tang Hui and Tina Signesdottir Hult, Chinese fashion photographer Trunk Xu, and OPPO’s own Pete Lau, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer. Their varied backgrounds reflect the competition’s commitment to both artistic excellence and global reach.
With over a million submissions in previous editions, the OPPO Photography Awards continue to assert themselves as one of the most vibrant platforms for mobile image-makers today. More than a celebration of device capability, the Awards speak to a deeper shift in photographic culture, where immediacy and intimacy meet sophistication, and where mobile photography is no longer defined by limitations.
Further information, rules, and how to submit your work can be found on the official awards website.
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