Congratulations to our 2025 award winners!
Neighbors Helping Neighbors Through the Fire
First Place
Seigfred Vince Teves
The Love of Protection
Honorable Mention
Pyae Phyo Htike
The Sanctuary of Softness
Honorable Mention
Kyaw Thu Wai
Heart
Honorable Mention
Muzaffer Murat İlhan
Caring Mother
Honorable Mention
Timea Ambrus
A Gentle Hold in Harsh Times
Honorable Mention
Sourav Das
Helping Hand
Non-profit Honoree
Joselito Arceta
The Light We Grow
AI “Inner Visions of Kindness”
Md Sabbir
Thank you to all of the photographers who captured and shared moments of kindness from communities across the globe!
The 2025 Our World is Kind international photo contest received thousands of wonderful and inspiring images from around the world. Check out the full gallery below to view the images that were submitted by kind and talented photographers to help inspire kindness, joy, and healing!
View the full gallery here:
https://envisionkindness.us.launchpad6.com/ourworldiskind2025/gallery
Over the last six contests, the Our World is Kind Photography Contest has generated over 12,000 submissions from 2000+ photographers in more than 150 countries. These moving images have inspired kindness, love, gratitude, and joy in tens of thousands of global viewers.
Now, more than ever, it’s important to work together to spread kindness and connection through our communities. That’s why Our World is Kind is back for the 7th time, seeking and sharing images from kind and talented photographers to help inspire kindness, joy, and healing around the world.
Contest closed on December 15, 2025.
Congratulations to our 2025 Finalists!
To view finalists, please see the galleries below. All finalist images are displayed in a random order. If you want to learn more about an image, click into the image and press “i”.
General Category Finalists
Nonprofit Category Finalists
Public Choice Category Finalists
AI “Inner Visions” Category Finalists
The Benefits of Participation
- It is FREE to enter!
- Your images can help create new acts of kindness and make people happier
- You could win some cash
- GMX, a large German news organization with millions of weekly readers, will publish the prize winning photos from the contest (see last year’s article here)
- Your work may be showcased on the Envision Kindness website and distributed through our networks with your photo credit
- Your work may be seen by thousands of people every day
- If someone wants to license a photo, we put them directly in touch with the photographer
- Your favorite non-profit could have their work celebrated and featured across Envision’s platforms
- You could be invited to participate in the paid Select Photographers program.
- Click HERE for rules, terms & conditions, and more information on how your images will be used
Prizes
$2000
First Place
$500
Nonprofit Honoree
$250
“AI Inner Visions of Kindness”
$200
Honorable Mention (5)
Photography Club Matching Prizes:
To honor the many wonderful photography clubs and organizations, we are offering special prizes:
- If a photographer who is a member of a club or organization wins a prize, Envision Kindness will make a matching donation of up to $500 USD to the club.
- The photography club or organization with the most accepted submissions will receive a $1,000 USD donation to benefit the club and its members.
- We will announce the clubs whose members have received a prize and the club with the most accepted submissions.
Select Photographers Matching Prizes:
This year, our Select Photographers have been invited to help to spread awareness of the contest. We will award a matching prize of up to $500 if a photographer who heard about the contest from them wins a prize in the contest. We will also double the award of up to $500 for Select Photographers who receive a prize.
Note: Photographers MUST indicate the name of the Select Photographer they heard about the contest from, or the photography club that they are a member of, at the time of submission. Please see rules and terms for more information. The distribution of prize money follows US law.
The Non-Profit Honoree Prize is back for 2025!
The Non-Profit prize will be awarded to a powerful image showcasing a registered non-profit’s work or impact. 50% of the prize will be awarded to the photographer, and 50% will be awarded to the nonprofit. We look forward to honoring their important work this year.
We love to showcase the meaningful work of non-profit organizations in our kindness videos like the “Kindness is Everywhere” video featured here. These videos are displayed in places where people experience stress, such as hospital waiting rooms, and help them to feel better.
For more information on this and our other prizes, see our FAQs.
Our “AI Inner Visions of Kindness” category is also back this year!
This prize will be awarded to an AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated image that illustrates your inner vision of what kindness can look like. This could look like a conceptual image, or a specific scene illustrating the way you imagine kindness in the world.
We encourage creativity! Whether it is kindness to others, to ourselves, to animals, to the planet, or to society, there are so many ways to visualize what kindness could look like. What is your inner vision?
Important: AI-generated images will be judged separately and will ONLY be accepted in this category of the contest. They will not be considered for the 1st place, honorable mention, or non-profit prizes. Please ensure that your AI-generated image submissions do not include recognizable/known figures such as politicians or celebrities. For more information on this and our other prizes, see our FAQs.
We want to be clear to photographers that we do not put AI images in the same category as photography. We value all kinds of creativity including AI image creation, but AI images will not replace or compete with traditional photography in this contest.
Photographers who submit photos to the contest will be considered for the paid Select Photographers program
The Select Photographers program is an invitation-only group where talented photographers receive an honorarium of $100 for the non-exclusive right to each image that is accepted through the program. We invite some photographers to join this program after we review submissions to the Our World is Kind photography contest.
You can learn more about the Select Photographers program here.
How We Use Images At Envision Kindness
Envision Kindness is a non-profit that inspires kindness, compassion, joy, and love through photography. We share images of kindness to inspire people wherever they are. We compile some of those images into videos to become part of a program called EnSpire.
You can see a sample of how we may use photos in the video montage Why Do Hugs Feel So Good?. You can also find more videos on the Enspire page, as well as links to the science showing how your images of kindness, caring, and compassion can make people happier, calmer, more grateful, and more generous! This is a very powerful and simple way to help people connect with their humanity and the humanity of others.
What does kindness look like?
Where do you see moments of kindness in your community? What stories can you tell?
Here’s a bit of inspiration to help you capture these impactful moments. Your photos can document a real-life moment or illustrate a concept. What does kindness look like to you?
KIND PEOPLE
We see kindness in people every day – in people we know and those we haven’t met yet lending a hand, helping others, or paying it forward.
KINDNESS IN NATURE
You may find kindness in animals, in a heart-shaped leaf, in hikers lending a hand, in protecting the environment, and so much more.
KINDNESS IN THE COMMUNITY
Our communities are filled with kindness! At work, in places of worship, in hospitals, from non-profits, and in public spaces and shops.
The Process
SUBMIT
FINALIST SELECTION
Finalists are selected through online voting (10) or by Envision Kindness staff. Harness the power of your community through online voting. See FAQs for more information.
JUDGING
Judges will choose winning photos from our finalists. Winners will be announced in January 2026.
Contest Judges
These esteemed judges have kindly volunteered their time and expertise to review all finalist photos and select contest winners.
John Bare
Sanjoy Bhattacharya
Maureen Bisognano
Agatha Bunanta
Cathaleen Curtiss
Kimara Ellefson
Leyla Emektar
Thuku Kariuki
Aundre Larrow
Mara Leite
Kristen McNicholas
Guri Mehta
Marilyn Turkovitch
Sergey Volkov
Promotional Partners
We are very grateful to the following kind organizations who have generously helped to promote the Our World Is Kind contest.
Do you have more questions?
Check out our FAQ section for some of our most popular questions.
*Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
*All prizes made according to US law. US law prohibits us from sending funds to certain countries at the moment including Iran, Russia, and Belarus; please check the terms & conditions for details.
*All submissions must be in English.
Submit your kindness images for free to join the movement, inspire others, and #PictureABetterWorld!