Image Competition

The Centre’s Image Competition celebrates the work of our fantastic researchers and staff through imagery and stories that invite us into the world of cancer research. The 2026 competition is now open, closing on Friday 5 June.

Research images are eligible for the competition, along with images showcasing or explaining research or those celebrating people, facilities and collaborative working at the Centre. The research demonstrated by images should be relevant to the Centre’s research themes and cancer research.

You can browse the 2025 winners here, and take a look back at the 2024 winners here.

Winners receive gift cards:

First place: £200
Second place: £100
Third place: £50

Eligibility criteria

Participants must be staff (including principal investigators, postdoctoral researchers, technical staff, and professional services) or PhD students associated with the City of London Centre from the partner institutions (QMUL, KCL, UCL and the Crick). You do not need to be funded by the Centre to participate.

Image requirements

The submitted image may be portrait or landscape.
Submit your original image, not reduced size image.
Please include your full name in the title of the file.
Images may be black and white or in colour, taken with any kind of camera. Minor adjustments are allowed, such as minor changes in cropping, sharpening, contrast, etc. Significantly altered or artistically enhanced photos are not accepted. The committee may request the original file/RAW/negative of your photo to verify this.
Images taken by someone other than the participant are not allowed.
Labels or annotations are not allowed.
The research that is demonstrated by the image should be relevant to the Centre research themes and cancer research.

Image caption requirements

Your image title should not exceed a maximum of 10 words.
Your accompanying narrative/caption should not exceed a maximum of 100 words.
Your image narrative must give a description of your image and place in the context of the research and or the City of London Centre.
Your caption should be in plain English (layman’s terms) and should be accessible to a non-specialist audience (layperson). We suggest that you avoid using acronyms.

Ethics requirements

You must ensure personal safety of everyone involved. Avoid taking unnecessary risks that can result in dangerous situations.
You are responsible for ensuring full compliance with any applicable national or international legislation.
Respect the work of other photographers and do not plagiarize.
You must not do anything to injure or distress an animal or damage its habitat in an attempt to secure an image.
If the committee suspects that an entry has been achieved through cruel or unethical practices, the entry will be disqualified.
Permission of any individuals in the image must be obtained before submitting

Selection criteria

The winners will be judged by the Centre’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement committee, against eligibility criteria and the following themes.

Technical skill: technical qualities of the image, including clarity, lighting and framing.
Impact: the image captures the imagination of the viewer, and is inspiring. Research images demonstrate City of London Centre research.
Communication: the narrative is accessible to laypeople, and describes the image and its message accurately. The narrative compliments the image and enhances its impact.

How to enter the competition

Please use WeTransfer to send your original image to cruk.cityoflondoncentre@ucl.ac.uk (it is free to use WeTransfer) as well as completing the following requirements by the end of Friday 5 June 2026. Please send your original image, not a reduced size image.

Please include your full name in the title of the image, so we can link your image to your form.
Please complete and sign the photo release form and email it to cruk.cityoflondoncentre@ucl.ac.uk.
Complete the submission form here including your image title and caption.

Terms and conditions

It is the responsibility of participants to ensure that the images they are submitting are their own work, that they own the copyright for them and that they do not infringe on the copyright or other rights of any third party.
You are required to sign the photo release form, confirming that if the image was taken in a controlled environment (ie a workplace or university premises), you have ensured that everyone visible in the image has consented to appear.
It is the responsibility of participants to ensure that the images do not infringe any laws.
Copyright for the submitted images remains with their authors. However, by entering the competition, participants are granting the CRUK City of London Centre irrevocable, perpetual permission for non-commercial use of the images online and in print, in any communication materials relating to the competition and the Centre, and Centre exhibitions.

If you have any questions, please contact cruk.cityoflondoncentre@ucl.ac.uk.