JURY
The award is decided by a five-member, independent jury of Hungarian and international experts. The jury is assisted by a secretary who does not have voting rights. The judging process takes place in two rounds (one online and one in person), in private and in English. The entries are not anonymized during the entire judging process.
The members of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary jury in 2026 are:
David Campany
creative director, International Center of Photography (New York, USA)
David Campany is a writer, educator, and internationally recognized curator who currently serves as creative director of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York.
His recent curatorial projects include major solo exhibitions like Jeff Wall: Photographs (Gallerie d’Italia, Turin, 2025), Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration (ICP, New York, 2025), and William Klein: All the World’s a Stage (MAAT, Lisbon, 2024). His notable ICP exhibitions also feature Actual Size! Photography at Life Scale (2022), A Trillion Sunset: A Century of Image Overload (2022), Gillian Laub: Family Matters (2021), and Diana Markosian: Santa Barbara (2021).
His many publications include Victor Burgin’s Photopath (MACK, 2023), On Photographs (Thames & Hudson / MIT Press, 2020), Photography and Cinema (Reaktion Books, 2008), and Art and Photography (Phaidon, 2003).
Wiktoria Michałkiewicz is an interdisciplinary expert and arts and culture strategist with extensive international experience in talent development, talent management, creative strategy, global partnerships and photography.
Alongside her academic achievements—holding five degrees from six European universities, including a PhD in Sociology, she has established a career as a contributing editor for prestigious international magazines like National Geographic, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. Additionally, she has excelled as a film and photography producer, talent agent, and exhibition curator. Michałkiewicz has played a pivotal role in producing and curating exhibitions for renowned artists and collaborating with international festivals and institutions, having worked in various roles with some of the most renowned photography artists, including Deborah Turbeville, James Nachtwey, Sebastião Salgado, Paul Nicklen & Cristina Mittermeier, Ralph Gibson, Mary McCartney, Ragnar Axelsson, Paul Hansen, Julia Fullerton-Batten, Bastiaan Woudt, Paolo Verzone, Ciril Jazbec, Cooper & Gorfer, among others.
In one of her roles, she was part of Fotografiska Stockholm and Fotografiska International, contributing to its global expansion to Tallinn and New York. She serves as a judge and nominator for international photography awards and portfolio reviewer at international festivals, including the Prix Pictet, Leica Oskar Barnack Award, Xposure International Photography Awards, Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography, among others. She often shares her know-how during workshops and masterclasses, including Houston Center for Photography, and the World Press Photo Foundation (Joop Swart Masterclass).
Michałkiewicz is a founder of REZO agency, a consulting agency specializing in global career strategies for visual artists, talent development, international art PR, and art advisory services. Operating globally from Lisbon, Warsaw, and Stockholm, she often works with most prestigious international art events, galleries, organizations, and venues as a contributor, jury member, speaker, and consultant.
Wiktoria Michalkiewicz PhD
arts & culture strategist, founder of REZO Agency
Sopronyi Gyula
photographer
Gyula Sopronyi was born in Budapest in 1974. He began his photography studies at the Práter Street Photography School in Budapest, and then completed the Magnum Masterclass in London in 2008. He later trained in Toronto and Coney Island in New York as well.
He began his photographer career in 1993, working for various daily newspapers and magazines, including the editorial staff of Esti Hírlap, Blikk and Népszabadság. From 2008, he continued as a freelance photographer, and by then his work had already appeared in international and domestic publications such as COLORS Magazine, Huffington Post, National Geographic Hungary and The New York Times.
Between 2011 and 2013, he worked as a photographer for the UNHCR refugee agency. Between 2019 and 2023, he was the head of the photography section of the leading Hungarian news website 24.hu, and then in 2024-25, he worked as the photo project manager of Centrál Media Group.
His work is marked by numerous awards: in 2009, he received the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship, and in 2011, he received the Rudolf Balogh Award. In 2012, he created the series Floating Viewpoint in Paris as an André Kertész scholarship holder. In 2015, he was a fellow of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary.
Éva Szombat is a photographer based in Budapest, Hungary. Her works explore themes of happiness, mental well-being, desire, memory, self-acceptance, and sexuality by using colorful visuals with a subtle political edge. The projects combine documentary methodology with an emphasis on presentation and installation, mixing spontaneous and staged elements, complemented by interviews and texts by the subjects or experts. The final form of the projects is often a photobook.
She previously self-published two books on themes of well-being: Happiness, and Practitioners. The series I Want Orgasms, Not Roses won the Robert Capa Grand Prize Hungary in 2021, later published by Kehrer Verlag in collaboration with Everybody Needs Art in 2022. In 2023 the book was a joint winner at Belfast Photo Festival Photo-Book Award. Her project about nostalgia, titled Echo in Delirium, was completed late in 2024, and was released also in book form in cooperation with Symposion and Everybody Needs Art. Then, in 2025, Echo In Delirium was shortlisted for the Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards and the Paris Photo – Aperture PhotoBook Awards.
Her works were displayed in numerous festivals and exhibitions such as Unseen Amsterdam, 212 Photography Istanbul, Belfast Photo Festival, White Box, Imago Lisboa, Foto Wien, Krinzinger Schottenfeld, Longtermhandstand, Galleri Image, Fotografica Bogota, National Museum Warsaw, Robert Capa Center, Ludwig Museum.
She was selected for the FUTURES Photography talent programme in 2018. Since 2020, she has been a member of the Secondary Archive Central and Eastern European Women’s Art Platform.
She earned her MA in Photography from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), and studied Visual Communication at ESAG Penninghen in Paris on an Erasmus scholarship. She is currently attending doctoral school and teaching photography at MOME.
Éva Szombat
photographer
Manfred Wiplinger
director, Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna, Austria)
Manfred Wiplinger is a director at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, where he has played a pivotal role since joining the gallery in 2007. A graduate of the University of Vienna, Wiplinger served as the head of Krinzinger Projekte from 2008 to 2012, where he helped developing the artist-in-residence program of the gallery and curated a number of exhibitions, including the notable project “Situaktion” in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
He focuses on fostering international artistic dialogue, particularly with artists from Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. He is also active as a public speaker on contemporary art and cross-cultural artistic exchange.
István Virágvölgyi (1982 – Budapest, Hungary) studied freehand drawing, desktop publishing, photography and earned a master’s degree from library and information studies at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary). He worked at the leading Hungarian news portal Origo first as photo editor and then as head of photography between 2007 and 2011. Then he joined MTI Hungarian News Agency and served as head of the photo desk for three years. He lectured about documentary photography and photo editing at the Budapest Metropolitan University between 2014–2019 and about photo history at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2022–2023. Since 2014 he workes as curator of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, since 2022 he also serves as artistic director, he is secretary of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary and the editor of Weekly Fortepan blog. Since 2016 he is cultural advisor of the Archabbey of Pannonhalma and since 2018 volunteer editor of the Fortepan digital photo archive. Since 2021, he has been a member of the board of trustees of the Pécsi József Photography Scholarship. He is married, has two children, lives and works between Budapest and Vienna.
István Virágvölgyi
curator, secretary of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary, artistic director of the Capa Center
