Huawei has announced the three grand prize winners of its 2026 XMAGE Awards, selected from more than 820,000 entries submitted by smartphone photographers around the world. The winners were revealed on 11 November at the Grand Palais in Paris, where Huawei also opened an exhibition celebrating 10 years of its mobile photography programme.
The competition has become an important showcase for Huawei’s camera technology, although the winning photographs also demonstrate just how much depends on the person holding the phone. A sophisticated camera can help capture a moment, but recognising that moment, composing the photograph and knowing when to press the shutter still require a photographer’s eye.
This year’s grand prize winners are Ali Abdul Hamid Alarbash, Mai Shunxi and Wan Ben. Their photographs capture everything from everyday life on the streets of Paris to a fleeting encounter between strangers and an unusual meeting of ancient history and modern technology.
The announcement coincides with Paris Photo 2026, the international photography fair taking place at the Grand Palais from 12 to 15 November.
Three winners from 820,000 entries
Huawei says its judging panel selected 100 outstanding works from the 820,000 submissions before choosing the three grand prize winners. The photographs were assessed across three themes: Order and Precision, Time and Reflection, and Aesthetics and Resonance.
Ali Abdul Hamid Alarbash won for Light & Shadow Across France, a collection of street photographs documenting ordinary moments in Paris. Among the images are a child surrounded by bubbles at a street carnival, a couple enjoying the sunset, people running through the city at dawn and pedestrians going about their day.
The judges praised Alarbash’s use of natural light and his ability to find interesting compositions in scenes that most people would probably walk straight past. The collection was captured using several Huawei smartphones, including the P60 Pro, a device released in 2023.
Mai Shunxi received a grand prize for A Fleeting Encounter, a photograph centred on a young woman’s gaze as people move around her. A blurred figure in the foreground gives the image a sense of movement, while the woman’s expression draws the viewer’s attention.
The judges were struck by the photograph’s ability to suggest a connection between strangers, even though the encounter may have lasted only a moment. It’s a simple composition that leaves plenty of room for the viewer to wonder what the subject was thinking and what happened immediately before or after the photograph was taken.
The third grand prize went to Wan Ben for Gaze Across Time and Space, a black-and-white photograph showing ancient stone statues beneath an aircraft’s vapour trail.
The photograph places objects that have stood for generations against a temporary mark left in the sky. The judges highlighted the contrast between the permanence of the statues and the rapid movement of modern life, with the composition bringing both into a single frame.
Each grand prize winner receives a $10,000 XMAGE creation fund, while the remaining 97 photographers selected for the XMAGE 100 receive $1,500 each.
The winning works, along with the rest of the Huawei XMAGE Awards 2026 selection, are available to view online.
A decade of Huawei smartphone photography
The awards ceremony also marked the opening of A Heartwarming World, an exhibition developed by Huawei XMAGE in collaboration with Paris Photo.
The exhibition looks back at a decade of Huawei’s involvement in mobile photography, bringing together photographs, camera components and examples of the technology that has shaped its smartphones over the years.
Visitors can explore three themed areas, Seeing Nature, Seeing the Works and Seeing Each Other, alongside a separate display dedicated to the development of Huawei’s imaging technology.
The exhibition follows last year’s theme, The World, You and Me, with this year’s collection focusing on the relationships between people, nature and their surroundings.
Huawei has good reason to celebrate its camera technology. Even as the company has faced challenges competing internationally following US restrictions that cut off access to Google Mobile Services, photography has remained one of the strongest selling points of its premium smartphones.
The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra’s moving telephoto lens is one example. The camera physically switches between two optical focal lengths, allowing Huawei to offer different zoom options using a single camera module. It’s an impressive achievement in a device small enough to fit in a pocket.
More recently, the Pura 90 series introduced a 200MP RYYB periscope telephoto sensor on the Pro Max, continuing Huawei’s investment in specialised camera hardware.
The XMAGE Awards give the company another way to demonstrate what its smartphones can produce, using photographs submitted by people who own and use the devices rather than images captured specifically for a product launch.
There’s something telling about the range of phones represented in this year’s winning entries. Alarbash’s collection includes photographs captured on the P60 Pro, showing that hardware released several years ago can still produce award-winning results.
Photography beyond the smartphone launch
Huawei’s partnership with Paris Photo also places its mobile photography programme within a wider photographic community, alongside established photographers, galleries and artists working with traditional equipment.
Alex Huang He, CMO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the company has spent the past decade developing relationships with photographers around the world.
“Over the past decade, we have grown alongside global creators, building an open, diverse, and heartwarming global community where people and stories connect through images.”
The awards are also part of Huawei’s efforts to build recognition for XMAGE beyond the cameras fitted to its smartphones. Having photographs exhibited at the Grand Palais, one of Paris’s best-known cultural venues, gives the programme exposure to an audience that extends beyond technology enthusiasts.
Of course, the competition also serves a marketing purpose. The photographs are captured on Huawei devices, the exhibition carries Huawei’s branding and the entire programme helps associate the company with photographic excellence.
But the work deserves to be judged on its own merits. Alarbash’s photographs of Paris, Mai Shunxi’s portrait and Wan Ben’s black-and-white composition are compelling because of what their creators chose to photograph and how they chose to frame it.
The A Heartwarming World exhibition forms part of Paris Photo 2026 at the Grand Palais, which runs until 15 November.