9th edition
The PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant, now in its 9th edition, aims to empower the work and careers of female and non-binary professionals of all ages and from all countries working in diverse areas of photography. Its mission is to support the growth of new generations and promote stories narrated from a female perspective while responding to the need to work for gender equality in the industry.
To participate, you are invited to submit work centred around a specific theme, narrative, or concept. All approaches are welcome, from classic to more experimental projects, and you may present more than one body of work. By applying, you retain full copyright of your images at all times, and we will ask for your permission to share them on our social media channels.
The judging will take place between October and November, with the shortlist to be announced before November 20. Thank you for considering this opportunity, and best wishes for your applications!
Closed
09 October
Shortlist announcement
November
plus a projection at PhotoVogue Festival 2026 and promotion on the PhMuseum channels.
plus a projection at PhotoVogue Festival 2026 and promotion on the PhMuseum channels.
plus a projection at PhotoVogue Festival 2026 and promotion on the PhMuseum channels.
plus a projection at PhotoVogue Festival 2026, a remote consultancy, and promotion on the PhMuseum channels. This prize is aimed at photographers who are 30 years of age or younger at the time of the application.
PhMuseum's Founding Director Giuseppe Oliverio will select a project among all of the submissions to be exhibited at PhMuseum Lab, Bologna Italy in 2026. The prize includes travel, accommodation and production costs.
Alessia Glaviano (Head of Global PhotoVogue and Director PhotoVogue Festival) will select a submission for an online featured interview on Vogue Italia.
All the shortlisted work will be projected at PhotoVogue Festival 2026 in Milan, Italy.
Our team will select 6 photographers from all the applicants, who will be granted a 60-minute online portfolio review with a mentor of their choice from the PhMuseum Education program.
All the shortlisted works will be projected at PhotoVogue Festival 2026 and promoted on the PhMuseum platform and social media accounts in the coming months. Judges will also assign honorable mentions to highlight projects they highly took into consideration.
All submissions will be eligible for publication in the second edition of PhMuseum's printed annual magazine, launching in Autumn 2026.
from Les Mornes, Le Feu © Cédrine Scheidig
“My motivation was, on one hand, the possibility of having my work rewarded and, on the other, gaining visibility for my practice. As a woman photographer of color, we face more challenges and invisibility in the photography market. Applying for this grant was my way of trying to address that.”
Detail from Rita Puig-Serra' Anatomy Of An Oyster, exhibited at PhMuseum Lab in June 2024
“I have no words to describe how beautiful it was to exhibit in Bologna. This was my first solo exhibition of Anatomy Of An Oyster, and it has been a dream to do it here. I am especially grateful for the support of the entire PhMuseum team in conceptualizing, creating, and producing the exhibition, as well as the final result. I could not have imagined anything more beautiful and fitting for the project. Therefore, I am infinitely thankful.”
Yes, you retain full copyright at all times. By applying you just grant us a license to publish your work in the Grant’s results page and for promotion of future editions of our grants program. In both cases, we will get in touch with you to inform you. For more info, please check the Grant's Terms and Conditions.
That passage of the T&C is necessary to point out that we are not liable in case one of the subjects portrayed in your work complains and/or even starts legal actions against us because he/she did not consent to that photo. For this reason, we will not ask for the model releases, unless those kind of situations arise. Bearing that in mind, please feel free to apply, unless you think there might be any risks in that sense. For more info, please read our Terms and Conditions.
You can upload a minimum of 5 photos and a maximum of 20 photos, according to the nature of your projects and your personal choices at the moment of editing it.
The maximum size allowed is 5MB, yet we recommend you upload lighter files in a good resolution since our platform is programmed to automatically compress to make the navigation faster. As a reference, we suggest you to upload a file where the resolution is 72 dpi with at least 1000px on the shortest side, and weighting around 2MB. This will also speed up the upload process.
You can upload photos in JPG and PNG format. TIFF, GIF, and other formats are currently not allowed.
You can select the cover photo of your submission at the moment of uploading the photos of your submission. Please notice that it can be cropped into a squared format, for the shortlists and results announcement.
The text shall be a description of your project in which you explain its concept/story and provide all the relevant information. There is no character limit, yet we recommend you to stay within 500 words. We also recommend you to explain briefly what the project is about in the first paragraph. Then develop the concept/story in the next 2-3-4 paragraphs, trying to be exhaustive yet clear and succinct. The judges will review several projects per day, so helping their work will be an advantage for you.
As an independent organisation with no donors no sponsor behind, we need the entry fee to run the open call (human resources, technological infrastructure, judges, etc…). The entry fee also invites applicants to take the submissions seriously. For this edition, the entry fee is €25 until 19 September at 11:59pm and €30 until 10 October at 11:59pm (GMT time) or the related amount indicated in USD and GBP, unless differently displayed on the open call landing page.
Currently, the accepted methods are Credit/Debit cards, Apple Pay and PayPal.
You will see a confirmation message just after completing the payment, and receive a confirmation email at the email address associated with your PhMuseum account. You will also see a copy of your submission in the Submissions section of your PhMuseum profile. If you grant us the permission to share the submission as Featured Submission on social media, you will also see a copy of your submission in your PhMuseum's Account. You can edit its privacy settings or any other info from the Posts section.
You can always download it from the link you will find in the submission confirmation email. Alternatively you can go Orders section of your PhMuseum's Account - just be sure to have logged in, then you can find it from the menu in the top right corner.
There is no limit to the number of projects you can present, yet you need to create a separate submission for each one of them.
Sure, you are welcome to upload diptychs, triptychs, and multiple images. The important thing is to respect the limit of 20 uploads/files per entry. Just to be clear, a diptych or triptych count for 1 upload/file.
If you apply before the Early Bird Deadline, you can modify it within 48 hours from that deadline. If you apply later, you can modify it until the Final Deadline.
When you successfully complete your application, we store it in the judges' review system. At the same time, we create a copy into your PhMuseum profile. You can edit the latter, yet those changes will not affect your Grant's submission.
Your submission is always private unless you are shortlisted for or awarded a prize. When you apply though, we can create a copy of your submission as a public post in case you select that option - so that our community of photographers, photo editors, and curators can also enjoy it. If you change your mind, you can provisionally remove it from the public website and put it into Draft mode. To do so, after you have successfully submitted your project to the Grant, go to the Posts section of your profile, and click the edit button of the content you want to modify. Once in edit mode, you will be able to untick the “Public on the website” option at the bottom of the page. This makes the post a draft, and you will be the only one who can see it. Please note that this change does not affect your Submission, stored in the Grant Review System.
Yes, collaborative projects are accepted under the condition that at least 50% of the team is composed of female and/or non-binary photographers.
Yes, the independent panel of judges has changed from the previous editions, and they will assign the prizes according to their own criteria. So you’re welcome to present again the same project.
We do not take or store any payment details on our servers. Our payments are securely processed via Stripe, a widely recognized service through which we accept payments. Here you can learn more about their security procedures: https://stripe.com/docs/security/stripe. Alternatively you can also pay with Paypal.
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In order to recover your password please go to https://phmuseum.com/password/reset and follow the guided steps to reset your password.Please notice that the Reset Password link you will receive to your email account expires after 60 minutes for security matters. In that case you will need to ask for a new one always at https://phmuseum.com/forgot-password https://phmuseum.com/forgot-password.