LONDON — Austrian photographer Josef Stefan won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award after his image “Flying Rodent,” showing a young Iberian lynx tossing a rodent into the air in Ciudad Real, Spain, drew a record 85,917 votes, according to the Natural History Museum’s announcement Wednesday, March 25, 2026. The win turned a split-second hunting scene into the biggest public-vote result the award has posted in recent years and gave the contest a clear conservation angle at the same time.
Stefan’s photo beat 23 other shortlisted images in the public round, which began with 24 People’s Choice finalists selected from the wider competition. The public-vote field sat alongside the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition’s 100 jury-selected winners announced in October 2025, drawn from 60,636 entries across 113 countries and territories.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice keeps building momentum
The award’s public reach has been climbing for three straight cycles. The museum’s 2025 People’s Choice winner, Ian Wood’s “No Access”, drew more than 76,000 votes, while Nima Sarikhani’s “Ice Bed” won in 2024 after more than 75,000 ballots. Stefan’s 85,917-vote total extends that rise and suggests the public round has become a major event in its own right, not just a side note to the main judging process.
The winning frame also carries a strong backstory. On the image page for “Flying Rodent,” the museum says Stefan spent two weeks observing lynx from a hide at Torre de Juan Abad and watched this young cat toy with its prey for about 20 minutes before eating it. Stefan described the Iberian lynx as “a living symbol of hope” and said the recognition was the highlight of his 30 years as a nature photographer.
Iberian lynx recovery gives the image a second layer
That hopeful framing is grounded in the species’ trajectory. A joint Spain-Portugal census update published in 2025 said the Iberian lynx population reached 2,401 registered animals in 2024, up 19% from the previous year. That does not erase the species’ fragility, but it does explain why a single photo of a young lynx at play can land as more than spectacle.
In that sense, Stefan’s win worked on two levels. It delivered the kind of behavioral drama public-vote contests reward, but it also arrived at a moment when the Iberian lynx has become one of Europe’s clearest examples of what long-term habitat work, reintroduction efforts and cross-border coordination can achieve.
The result also shows how the Wildlife Photographer of the Year audience has shifted in recent years. Recent public winners have moved from Arctic fragility to urban wildlife and now to species recovery, giving the People’s Choice strand a stronger narrative continuity than many annual photo contests manage.
For Stefan, that means “Flying Rodent” is likely to be remembered not only for timing and technique, but for arriving when the subject itself had become part of the story.
