Alternative landscape, by Ghazaleh Yazdanparast Tehrani — Honorable Mention of the CitiesToBe Photo Award 2023 (2)
WHSD, by Toma Gerzha - Honorable Mention of the CitiesToBe Photo Award 2023 (2)
Vorkuta_Demyanenko
Great Expectations - Laura
Wuhan_Blvd (1)

citiestobe photo award

‘Alternative landscape‘
by Ghazaleh Yazdanparast Tehrani (Iran)

The CitiesToBe Photo Award

A triennial international urban photography competition inviting photographers who explore cities in all their complexity, contradiction and everyday possibility. By CitiesToBe, Anteverti's urban think lab
Discover more on Anteverti

We created the CitiesToBe Photo Award in 2019 from a conviction that has guided our work from the beginning: that artistic creation is one of the most powerful ways to understand, question and reimagine contemporary urban life.

Through the CitiesToBe Photo Award, we support photographers who place the city at the centre of their practice, and we give visibility to work that moves beyond surface narratives to reveal what cities actually are — not as infrastructure or backdrop, but as lived, contested, layered experience.

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Works from previous editions of the CitiesToBe Photo Award: Nathalie Daoust (winner, CTBPA 2023) · Roman Demyanenko (winner, CTBPA 2020) · Olesia Kim · Gianluca Cecere · Benedetta Ristori · Manuel Álvarez Diestro (CTBPA 2020–2023)

The 26 Edition is Open

The third edition focuses, for the first time, on a specific theme: the role of 'third places' in the contemporary city — the informal, collective spaces beyond home and work where urban life truly unfolds.

For the first time, it recognises photographic projects — sustained visual narratives of 10 to 20 images — rather than single photographs. The call is open until September 30, 2026. Free to enter.

Learn more on the CTBPA26 and submit your project
Get all the details — topic, prizes, and how to participate — by clicking here

Previous Editions

The inaugural edition, in 2020, received 533 photographs from more than 60 countries. The second, in 2023, drew 1,189 submissions from 94 countries — confirming the award's growing reach and the breadth of perspectives it brings together. Together, the two editions form a visual archive that keeps expanding: a record of how cities are being seen, felt and questioned right now, across the world.

The third edition launches in 2026. For the first time, it will be thematic — and for the first time, it will recognise not single images, but photographic projects: sustained visual narratives that go deeper into their subject. The theme, the call, the dates: now open.

Explore the editions archive below.