Nathan Beard wins final National Photographic Portrait Prize

Nathan Beard has won the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2026 with an intimate portrait of his aunt, Mae Khong 2026, as the National Portrait Gallery prepares to farewell one of its longest-running exhibition programs.

After almost two decades of documenting the faces and stories of contemporary Australia, the National Photographic Portrait Prize is drawing to a close.

The National Portrait Gallery has announced Nathan Beard as the winner of the 2026 Prize for Mae Khong 2026, a quietly affecting portrait that explores familial connection, vulnerability and lived experience.

Established in 2007, the annual prize has become a significant platform for Australian photographic portraiture, bringing together established and emerging practitioners and capturing an evolving picture of Australian life.

Over its history, the Prize has encompassed images ranging from the playful and celebratory to portraits marked by intimacy, strength and vulnerability. Its final edition will be accompanied by a curated retrospective looking back at almost 20 years of the competition.

Nathan Beard awarded $30,000 prize

The judges praised Beard’s winning photograph for its ability to establish an emotional connection between viewer and subject despite concealing Mae Khong’s face.

They described the work as having an “immediate and compelling emotional pull”, highlighting its tightly framed composition, restrained palette and the vulnerability of its private yet familiar scene.

“There is both resilience and fatigue legible in Mae’s posture,” the judges noted, describing the image as both candid and expressive of the depth of the familial relationship between artist and subject.

Beard receives $30,000 from the National Portrait Gallery, together with $20,000 worth of photographic equipment from Canon Australia.

Phuong Nguyen Le wins First Time Finalist Award

The First Time Finalist Award has been presented to Phuong Nguyen Le for Nghỉ/Nghiêm (Attention/At ease) 2025.

The judges described the work as a “conceptually innovative portrait” executed with “skill and tenderness”.

Central to the work is Nguyen Le’s engagement with photographic technology and its historical relationship with war and conflict. By adapting the technique to produce a pair of carefully constructed images, the judges observed that the artist transforms the photographic process into an act of reclamation.

The work’s use of duplication was also singled out for the way it communicates the complexity of subject Lê Ngọc Long’s wartime experience.

Nguyen Le receives $3,000 courtesy of EIZO.

Art Handlers’ Award

Hussein Abdirahman Mohamud has received the Art Handlers’ Award for Untitled: 01 2025, from the series What remains?

The award carries a $3,000 prize courtesy of IAS Logistics.

A further People’s Choice Award, worth $10,000 and supported by the Calvert-Jones Foundation, will be decided by visitors to the exhibition.

All finalists in the 2026 Prize receive artist and copyright fees, with freight and travel costs also covered.

The end of an era for Australian portrait photography

The conclusion of the National Photographic Portrait Prize brings to an end an exhibition that has helped chart almost two decades of Australian photographic practice.

Since 2007, hundreds of portraits have collectively documented a changing nation, recording not only notable Australians but families, communities and individuals whose experiences contribute to a broader portrait of contemporary life.

To mark the Prize’s final year, the National Portrait Gallery will present a curated retrospective alongside the 2026 finalists exhibition, revisiting significant photographs and moments from the competition’s history.

The retrospective gives audiences an opportunity to consider how Australian photographic portraiture—and Australia itself—has changed during the Prize’s lifetime.

The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2026 is on display at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, from 22 August to 11 October 2026, before touring nationally.