Zanele Muholi awarded the 2026 Hasselblad Award
Zanele Muholi has been named the recipient of the 2026 Hasselblad Award, the world’s largest photography prize. The award includes SEK 2,000,000, a gold medal and a Hasselblad camera, and recognises a body of work with significant international impact.

About Zanele Muholi’s artistic practice
Zanele Muholi is an internationally active photographer and visual activist whose work centres on visibility, dignity and the rights of Black LGBTQIA+ communities. Through powerful portraiture and long-term projects such as Faces and Phases and Somnyama Ngonyama, Muholi combines artistic precision with political engagement. The work challenges norms and helps shape alternative visual narratives of identity, representation and resistance.

Exhibition at Hasselblad Center
The exhibition at Hasselblad Center opens on 10 October and will present a selection of Zanele Muholi’s works.

Hasselblad Award Week 2026
In connection with the award, Hasselblad Award Week will take place in Gothenburg, featuring an extensive programme that includes a seminar, an artist talk, a concert with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, a book launch, an exhibition preview, and the formal award ceremony on 9 October. The week highlights the laureate and creates opportunities for dialogue between audiences, artists and researchers within the field of photography.

Bild: Miss D’vine II, 2007
© Zanele Muholi.
Courtesy Yancey Richardson, New York and Southern Guild, Cape Town.