Is this image really the National Geographic Award Winning Photograph of the Year? Fact Check
Claim : Image allegedly claims to be National Geographic Award Winning Photograph of the Year.
Conclusion : The claim is totally false. The image has been generated by AI and is not the National Geographic Award Winning Photograph of the Year. National Geographic’s official “Pictures of the Year 2025” collection features 25 images selected from thousands of images submitted by their photographers, covering topics like wildlife, science, and human stories. South African photographer Wim van den Heever won the 61st Wildlife Photographer award of the Year (2025)
Rating : Totally False 
Several social media users have claimed that an image has allegedly won the National Geographic Award of the Year. X user ‘HiteshNath22372’ shared such a claim with an image of a bald eagle. The caption states: “National Geographic Award Winning Photograph of the Year”. This implies the image is an authentic photograph that received National Geographic’s prestigious “Picture of the Year” award for 2025 since there is no result for 2026 yet. View the post below –
National Geographic Award Winning Photograph of the Year 📷 🌕 pic.twitter.com/Fx0NQmvbAE
— Random Things (@HiteshNath22372) February 19, 2026
Other users have shared similar claims which can be seen here and here
FACT CHECK
DigitEYE India decided to investigate this claim and found that it is totally false. The image was created using AI and has not received any National Geographic “Photograph of the Year” recognition. National Geographic’s official “Pictures of the Year 2025” collection includes 25 photographs chosen from thousands of submissions. Additionally, the 61st Wildlife Photographer of the Year title was awarded to South African photographer Wim van den Heever for his “Ghost Town Visitor”, a striking image of a brown hyena in the abandoned diamond mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia.
We first conducted a reverse image search using the image in the claim to learn more about it. However, there were no verified results or webpages on the National Geographic page that declared this viral image as the winner. This image was uploaded by Pinterest user ‘Jolanda Stander’ with a clear label of ‘AI modified’as seen below.
Following this, we conducted a web search with the phrase “ National Geographic Award Winning Photograph of the Year” to learn about the real winners or photographs.
Upon finding no image of an eagle as shown in the claim, we searched for the official wildlife photographer of the year award. We learnt from an article by Euronews that ‘South African photographer Wim van den Heever has won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 award and the Urban Wildlife award for his shot “Ghost Town Visitor.”’ The article lists some of these best shots and an accompanying description that explains them. View photo and a section from the article below –
National Geographic’s official “Pictures of the Year 2025” features 25 images selected from thousands submitted by their photographers, covering topics like wildlife, science, and human stories such as “Building a Pop-Up Megacity” by George Steinmetz, “Another Giant Leap” by Micaiah Carter, “In the arms of family” by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, “Better by a Bunch” by John Stanmeyer among others. View some photographs 
from the collection. Full collections of the year 2025 can be seen here.
Lastly, we downloaded the image shown in the claim and ran it through an AI detector. The results proved that a significant part of this, if not the whole image was generated using AI. View the results below –
When we checked for the 2026 awards, we learned that National Geographic Explorer Carlton Ward Jr. has been selected to receive the 2026 Eliza Scidmore Award in recognition of his exceptional storytelling work. Furthermore, when we checked the Best of the World 2026 feature, we found that National Geographic reviewed more than 3,000 Instagram entries from its #NatGeoYourShotBOTW2026 challenge and selected 10 standout travel photos from readers worldwide. The chosen images highlight remarkable locations across Alaska, Canada, the UAE, Iceland, Austria, the United States, Turkey, and Slovenia, celebrating powerful storytelling through travel photography. However, none of these match the image in the claim.
Other search results pointed towards World Nature Photography Awards 2026 with Jono Allen taking out the top prize. From an article by The Guardian, we learnt that he won Gold in the Underwater category and was named World Nature Photographer of the Year 2026 for his striking image of a white humpback calf captured in Vava’u, Tonga. However, this too does not match the image in the claim and this award is different from the National Geographic Awards.
Thus, the claim is totally false.
