The 2026 Pano Awards Winners Expand the Frame

The winners of the 17th Epson International Pano Awards turn the wide frame into far more than a scenic format. Across aerial landscapes, night skies, architecture, and wildlife, the strongest images use scale to reveal relationships that a conventional crop would miss.

Spanish photographer Daniel Viñé Garcia was named 2026 Open Photographer of the Year. His winning aerial image, The Sleeping Giant, looks toward the snow-covered Parinacota and Pomerape volcanoes in Chile through the final color of sunset.

A panorama built from 33 exposures

Garcia spent three days and nights at roughly 4,500 meters waiting for the right conditions. The finished photograph began as a 360-degree aerial panorama assembled from 33 exposures, then was refined around the volcanoes, lakes, and changing light.

The competition received 4,084 entries from photographers in 93 countries, a 19 percent increase over 2025. A new aerial division accounted for 680 entries, giving drone-made panoramas a dedicated place alongside the established landscape and built-environment categories.

Night skies assembled at enormous scale

Mikel Iraeta won Open Nature/Landscape with Double Arch on Milford Sound. The image combines 107 photographs: tracked sky panoramas made at different times, a 14-panel view of the foreground, exposure brackets, and one additional frame placing the photographer within the scene.

Tomás Sánchez Ruiz, also from Spain, was named Amateur Photographer of the Year. His winning Double Arch over Stokksnes places Iceland’s Vestrahorn beneath an aurora, framed by fresh snow across the black-sand foreground.

From landscape to built environment

Xuecheng Liu won Open Built Environment with Center of the Cosmos, a 25-frame aerial panorama that makes Times Square appear to radiate through Manhattan like a field of light. Other major honors went to Wutimet Bunyasirisith for the Southeast Asia Open Photographer of the Year award and Preeti and Prashant Chacko for the Epson Digital Art Prize.

The full 2026 winners gallery includes the top-ranked images and photographers’ notes on how they were made. This story was inspired by Kottke’s selection; competition figures and results were cross-checked against the official awards announcement.