Members' Monthly Competition - 2026

The monthly image competition gives BIPP members opportunities to test, showcase and celebrate their talent and creativity.

The competition runs for ten months, from January to October, and each round will open on the first working day of the month and close at midnight on the last day.

For each category, an entrant’s three top monthly scores accrue to the BIPP’s Professional Photographer of the Year award (overall and for each individual category).

This is a professional photography competition – the fundamental parts of the images should have been created with a camera, not AI. As working professionals, we expect that the images are relatively recent and that all images (or their core components) have been captured since 1st January 2024.

Judging normally happens during the first week of the month. The results are announced on the 15^th of the month.

Membership inlcudes a single free entry each month. Subsequent images are charged at £5 each with a maximum of six monthly entries per category (remember only your single top score in each category each month counts towards a PoTY award).

The competition is open to all working professional members of the BIPP, with the following caveats:

• Judges may enter the competition, but not in any month in which they are judging.
• Judges who are part of any final assessment panel may not enter the competition.
• Chair of Qualifications and Awards, Competition Chair, and employees of the BIPP may not enter the competition.
• Images from workshops, organised portfolio builder events and similar may not be used in the competition, either by the participant or by the instructor even if both parties were not together at the time of capture.
• An image may only be entered in a single category.
• Variants of a single base image may not be entered multiple times (e.g. colour and monochrome).
• Entries from previous monthly competitions may not be re-entered.

Recipients of any awards must be members of the BIPP at the time of the awards ceremony (there is no requirement to attend, but you can’t win a member’s award if you’re not a member).

Top tip: follow the rules.

Our competitions share some common rules and each category has its own definition and specific rules.

There is even an entrant’s checkist to help make it easy.

Every month, we take the top-scoring image for each photographer in each category to count towards the Photographer Of The Year award. We will accrue the three highest-scoring months for each photographer – the photographer with the highest three out of ten months total score in each category will win that category title (all three scores need to achieve a bronze or above).

Why do three and not all ten months count? This is so you can have a month or two without entering if you wish but still accrue sufficient points to win (though the more months you enter, the better chance you have!)

• Diamond (100) – Truly exceptional work of historic or defining quality. Virtually flawless, unmistakably original, and unlikely to be equalled within the competition cycle. A reference image for the category.

• Platinum (95 – 99) – Exceptional, rare professional work. Demonstrates mastery, authority, and clarity of vision. Judges would expect to see this level of work recognised at the highest international level.

• Gold (90-94)  – Outstanding, category-leading professional work. Original, resolved, and difficult to fault. Sets a clear benchmark within the category.

• Silver (85 – 89) – Exceptional professional work. Strong concept, excellent execution, and confident authorship.

• Bronze (80 – 84) – High-quality professional work. Clear creative or commercial strength. Judges actively respond to it.

• Commended (77 – 79) – Strong professional work with clear intent, good control, and thoughtful execution. Memorable but not exceptional.

Images are scored to our judging standards, not relative to each other. The final score for an image is the average of the all the judges individual scores – fractional scores do not round up (79.9 does not become a bronze).

Judging is anonymous (the judges have no knowledge of the entrants and the entrants do not know who will be judging in any given month).

Read the full scoring guidance for judges. 

All images (or the principal elements) must have been captured since 1st January 2024.

Giving a title to your entry is mandatory – titles will appear on certificates and are made available to the judges.

• Files should be uploaded as sRGB JPEGs.
• Files should be submitted at least 4000px on the longest side (but they don’t need to be significantly bigger – maximum of 5000px is fine)
• Your file name must be under 32 characters and must not contain any symbols.
• Borders, keylines, watermarks or identifying information must not be added (and will result in disqualification).
• Please do not strip copyright and date EXIF (where possible we will aim to preserve the embedded info).

Each category has a full description and specific rules which should be read and understood in conjunction with the common/ general rules. Failure to comply with the category definition and rules can result in penalised scores or disqualification. We do however reserve the right to reassign an entry to a more appropriate category and will endeavour to do so rather than disqualify.

1. Advertising & Commercial
2. Aerial & Drone
3. Architectural & Interiors
4. Digital Creation
5. Fashion & Beauty
6. Fine Art & Illustrative
7. Landscape & Cityscape
8. Music & Sports
9. Natural World
10. Newborn
11. Pets & Domesticated Animals
12. Photojournalism & Street
13. Portrait
14. Wedding

The active competition will be presented to after login to the awards site.

First time entrants need to register.

• 21st July 2026 – Add standard page header.
• 21st January 2026 – add Platinum and Diamond score bands; split full category definitions to separate page.
• 12th January 2026 – Initial publication