Retoucher of the Year Competition Wants Your Photos

An open call for photographers to submit their photos to the Retoucher of the Year has been put out, with the competition searching for photographers who wouldn’t mind someone else editing their images.

And it’s not just anyone: the talented retouchers working on the images will all be vying to win the international prize of Retoucher of the Year, so all of them will be looking to do a great job.

The photographs selected through the open call will become the official source images for Retoucher of the Year 2026.

Everyone competing within the same category works from the same source images and the same creative brief.

That creates an unusual opportunity to see what happens when retouchers from different countries, backgrounds, and creative disciplines are all given exactly the same starting point.

There are five categories in total: Rising Star – Beauty, which focuses on skin and portraiture; Supernova – Product, product photography; Luminist – Colour Grading, which is experimental and all about color, light, and atmosphere; Alchemist – Composite, for cinematic photographers who can create a suite of images; Halo – Editorial Fashion, for photos that would be at home in a fashion magazine.

The Retouch League, the organization behind the competition, says that chosen photographers can remain involved with the process: each selected photographer is invited to become a special guest judge for their own image set.

After seeing how their photograph has been interpreted, they select the edit that they believe best reflects their original creative vision. Their chosen retoucher receives an additional point towards their final competition score. A panel of judges from across photography and post-production will also have their say.

“For a photographer, that means the open call offers something quite unusual: the chance to watch multiple professional artists interpret the same work, and then have a voice in deciding which interpretation resonates most strongly with the intention behind the original photograph,” the Retouch League says.

The open call for photographers closes on September 6, 2026. Photographers and creative teams can view the five briefs and submit their work here. Full competition details can be found here.