Prix Pictet announces ‘Jungle’ as theme for twelfth cycle during opening week of Les Rencontres d’Arles
Every second year, the Prix Pictet launches a new cycle that promotes discussion and debate on issues of environmental and social sustainability. The cycle begins with the announcement of a new theme during the opening week of Les Rencontres d'Arles and culminates in a global exhibition tour. Prix Pictet themes have always revolved around one word — from Water and Disorder to Space, Fire and Storm. One powerful, often abstract concept, highlighting a particular facet of sustainability, open to countless interpretations.
On 9 July 2026, Michael Benson, Director of the Prix Pictet, announced that the theme for the twelfth cycle will be Jungle. Commenting on the new theme, he said:
“The world’s jungles are the great green lungs of the planet. These huge carbon sinks play a crucial role in regulating and helping to stabilise the planet’s climate. Yet across the globe jungles are in crisis - forests are threatened by deforestation, fires, and degradation; surface water has been lost; and rivers are increasingly disconnected and polluted. The implications of any loss or degradation of these densely interconnected ecosystems extend well beyond changes in land use.
Nothing in a jungle exists alone. They are complex interconnected systems that we only vaguely understand. The jungle is a place of mystery and secrets. It is a place of legendary lost cities and civilisations of economic adventures and many broken dreams. In this way, the jungle mirrors contemporary human environments more than we might expect. Cities, digital networks and social ecosystems have their own undergrowth: layers of complexity that obscure as much as they reveal.”
Over the coming months the Prix Pictet’s global network of over 350 nominators will identify portfolios of work responding to the twelfth theme. These portfolios will then be reviewed by the award’s independent jury, and a shortlist of twelve photographers will be announced in summer 2027.
The twelfth laureate will be announced at the opening of an exhibition featuring the work of the shortlisted photographers at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in September 2027. The exhibition will then tour to over a dozen venues, bringing the work to an international audience.
Alfredo Jaar, winner of the Prix Pictet Storm
The announcement was followed by a presentation by Chilean artist, architect, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar. Jaar was announced as the winner of Storm, the eleventh cycle of the Prix Pictet, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in September 2025 for this series The End (2025).
Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, winner of the eleventh cycle of the Prix Pictet.
Appearing alone on stage, Jaar reflected on The End which focuses on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Described by scientists as an ‘environmental nuclear bomb’, the lake is a keystone ecosystem in the western hemisphere but is being destroyed by excessive water extraction. It has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area since the mid-nineteenth century, exposing toxic dust and driving salinity to dangerous levels. Saline lake loss triggers a long-term cycle of environmental, health and economic suffering and without a dramatic increase in water flow, the Great Salt Lake risks disappearing altogether, causing immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment and economy.
Alfredo Jaar on stage during the opening week of Les Rencontres d'Arles.
Meanwhile, the Prix Pictet Storm tour continues with forthcoming exhibitions at Fotografiska Shenzhen; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; and RMIT Gallery, Melbourne.
Prix Pictet Jury
The Prix Pictet welcomes Dutch-born British businessman Sir Tim Smit as Chair of the Independent Jury. Smit helped jointly create the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and the Eden Project and replaces Sir David King who has stepped down after nine cycles. The full Independent Jury will be announced later this summer.
The Prix Pictet independent Jury are leading names from across the arts, photojournalism and sustainability sector who use their extensive knowledge both in their own area and beyond, to select a shortlist and eventual winner whose work fits with the award’s current Theme as well as communicates important messages about global environmental and social issues.
Prix Pictet at Paris Photo
Last week it was announced that Paris Photo will host a dedicated Prix Pictet exhibition to coincide with Pictet Group becoming the fair’s Official Partner. Prix Pictet will occupy a space on the Promenoir, a central and prominent position within the Nef of the Grand Palais. It will present a curated selection of work by its Laureates, demonstrating the exceptional quality and breadth of artistic vision that Prix Pictet has recognised since 2008 and address themes that are as urgent today as when the photographers were first selected by the Prix Pictet jury.
Notes to Editors
About the Prix Pictet
The Prix Pictet was founded by the Geneva-based Pictet Group in 2008 and is recognised today as the world’s leading prize for photography and sustainability. It is independently governed, managed and administered by an independent secretariat and jury, with an advisory board.
For each cycle, the award focuses on a different theme that promotes discussion and debate on issues of sustainability. A network of over 350 nominators, including critics, curators, and other specialists in photography, invites artists from around the world to submit their work. The independent jury creates a shortlist of twelve photographers based on artistic and photographic merit, originality in conception and/or execution, relevance to the current cycle’s theme, ability to address a pressing sustainability challenge, and ensuring their series is a unified and coherent body of work. The jury then selects the winner from the shortlist, and a prize of 100,000 Swiss Francs is awarded for a body of work that speaks most powerfully to the theme. (Read more about the prize and process here.) The touring exhibitions of Prix Pictet have reached over 1.5 million visitors worldwide.
The eleven previous Prix Pictet laureates are Alfredo Jaar (Storm), Gauri Gill (Human), Sally Mann (Fire), Joana Choumali (Hope), Richard Mosse (Space), Valérie Belin (Disorder), Michael Schmidt (Consumption), Luc Delahaye (Power), Mitch Epstein (Growth), Nadav Kander (Earth) and Benoit Aquin (Water).
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About Alfredo Jaar
Jaar participated in the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009 and 2013) and the Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (1987, 1989, 2010 and 2021), as well as Documenta in Kassel, Germany (1987 and 2002). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Musee cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2007); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst, all in Berlin (2012); Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2013); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom (2017); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2020); SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo (2021); and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2023). Jaar has received numerous awards including the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in Sweden in 2020. In 2024, he was awarded the IV Mediterranean Albert Camus Prize in Spain and this year has won the Edward MacDowell Medal in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
His work can be found in dozens of public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo; Tate, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; and Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Japan. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000, both in the United States.
