Swiss Rockfall Image Voted Press Photo Of The Year

Laurent Gilliéron from the Keystone-SDA news agency won first prize in the topicality category with his picture Blatten 2030 on the landslide in the Lötschental valley in canton Valais. It shows a destroyed house in a dammed lake that has formed due to the mass of debris.

The picture was taken in September 2025, when the symbolic ground-breaking ceremony for the Blatten 2030 reconstruction project took place.

In second and third place in this category are Flavia Leuenberger Ceppi (Le Temps) with the topic Femicide and Boris Müller on the SVP Albisgüetlitagung (Zürcher Oberländer). First place in the Everyday Life category went to Sabine Hess (NZZ Folio) with an article on Charles Bonnet syndrome.

Odile Meylan (24Heures) won the main prize in the Swiss Stories category with“Le parc Jorat, la plus grande Forêt Périurbaine de Suisse”. Joël Hunn took first place in the portrait category with his pictures of Swiss writer Peter Bichsel (NZZ am Sonntag Magazin).

In the sports category, all three podium places were taken by participants from the media in French-speaking Switzerland. First place went to Gabriel Monnet (L'illustré) with“Lausanne en gymnersion”. Second place went to Adrien Perritaz (L'illustré) and Sabine Papilloud (Le Nouvelliste). The foreign category was led by Mario Heller (Republic) with the topic“Fliessende Grenzen”.

The award ceremony will take place on April 24 at the Swiss Press Awards in Bern. The Swiss Press Photographer of the Year will also be honoured at this event. The six category winners are nominated for this honour.

This content was published on Dec 17, 2025 Experts are trying to better understand how the unprecedented Blatten collapse occurred – and how to better anticipate the next one.