The Cosplay Photography Awards 2026
Results

Saal Digital

Saal Digital is a European pioneer in premium photo products, offering professional-quality photo books, prints, wall art, and calendars with rapid production and shipping. Recognized for their innovative layflat binding technology and 24-hour turnaround, they serve photographers and creative professionals across Europe.

Cosplayshop

Cosplayshop.be is Europe's leading one-stop shop for cosplay materials, offering EVA foams, Worbla, primers, and proprietary products designed specifically for costume and prop creation. Located in Belgium with international shipping, they serve cosplayers, LARP enthusiasts, and costume designers across Europe.

OH3-Studios

OH3-Studios is a professional photography studio and rental facility located in Werbach, Germany, offering over 400 square meters of creative space for photographers, videographers, and content creators. The studio provides photography services across multiple genres as well as flexible rental options and specialized photography workshops.

Composite Nation

Composite Nation is a creative powerhouse built by and for digital artists. Founded in 2018 by Mexican compositing expert Mario Olvera, they create next-generation Adobe Photoshop plugins that turn complex editing into a seamless experience. Their tools empower photographers and CGI artists to push their creative limits, featuring standout plugins like Oniric for stunning photorealistic glows and BreakGen for instant layer animations. Beyond delivering game-changing software, Composite Nation is a vibrant community and educational hub dedicated to helping you master your craft.

Lense Odyssey Studio

Lense Odyssey Studio is a Belgium-based photography and scenography studio specializing in ultra-detailed, carefully crafted physical environments. Founded by a passionate couple, the studio is built on the belief that exceptional, immersive worlds and creative decors should be accessible to everyone.

Retouch4me

Retouch4me builds AI retouching plugins that do the boring half of the job so you can spend your time on the half that matters. Founded in Tallinn by Oleg Sharonov, the developer behind 3D LUT Creator, the company grew out of eight years of retouching work and two years of deep learning research, and now serves over 300,000 photographers and retouchers in more than 120 countries. Their neural networks handle skin healing, dodge and burn, backdrop cleanup, fabric, dust and color matching, each as a separate plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom and Capture One, with video versions for DaVinci Resolve. Everything runs locally on your own machine, the output stays on layers you can still edit, and the models are trained in-house on professional retouching examples rather than on customer photos. TIPA named their portrait editing software the best of 2024.

Pixelmania

An international cosplay photography event based in Lubomierz, Poland, featuring participants from across the world who gather to create high-quality cosplay photos and videos. The event provides access to stunning regional locations including castle ruins, monasteries, waterfalls, and Japanese gardens throughout Lower Silesia.

Focus Cosplay

France's first dedicated cosplay photography event, organized by La Ligue des Cosplayers Extraordinaires, bringing together international cosplayers, photographers, and videographers. The event is held annually with selective participation and takes place over 3 days at curated locations in central France.

Cosphoria

Launched in 2026 as Belgium's first cosplay photography event, this exclusive, application-based two-day gathering in the heart of the country bridges the gap between cosplayers, photographers, and filmmakers from all over. By securing access to stunning, picture-perfect settings, the event fosters genuine creative synergies, giving participants a safe space to snap the perfect picture.

Winner of Atmospheric Arts

Look Solutions Power-Tiny

Real fog, anywhere you like, with no cable and no excuses! This thing pulls 400 W off a 12 V battery and is already throwing haze one second after you flick the switch, so the atmosphere lands exactly on the beat instead of two minutes after the moment has gone. A single 250 ml tank gives you ten minutes of unbroken fog or 150 short bursts, and the whole rig is only 5.6 kg with the battery in. At 22.3 x 10 x 21 cm you just sling it in a bag and carry it up the hill. Forest at dawn, empty car park, concrete stairwell, it makes no difference. You stop waiting for the light to do something interesting and start making it happen!

Winner of That Should be Printed

€80 Saal Digital voucher

Eighty euros to finally turn a file into something you can actually hold! Saal Digital is the lab European photographers go to when a picture deserves better than a screen, and for this category the obvious move is a FineArt print on Hahnemühle Baryta. It is 325 g/m², bright white, 100% alpha cellulose, with a glossy darkroom surface that drops into genuinely deep blacks and holds every grey step in between. They publish ICC profiles for every FineArt finish too, so what turns up in the post is exactly what you saw on your monitor. Photo books and wall art are fair game as well!

Winner of Chili Jam

Two studio rental hours

Two hours inside a place built for exactly this kind of work! OH3-Studios sits in the Taubertal with over 400 m² across four studios, and these are proper finished sets, not empty white boxes. Studio 2 on its own hands you a cyberpunk Japantown with scaffold stairs, a VIP lounge, a lost place and a prison cell, the whole thing strung with LED and neon. Studio 3 runs 120 m² under ceilings up to 5.7 m and swings from a medieval tavern to a leather and firelight gentlemen’s room to a tatami and shoji Japanese room on an RGB backdrop to a Chinese alley under red lanterns. Studio 1 gives you daylight windows, a deep blue room and a cloud wall, and Studio 4 is a full Mediterranean resort with an actual pool. Flash and continuous light are sitting there waiting for you, and cosplay is on their own list of what the space is for, so you just walk in and get to work!

Winner of Color Unleashed

Two studio rental hours

Two hours to shoot inside highly immersive, handcrafted worlds! Lense Odyssey Studio brings incredibly detailed physical sets to Belgium, built specifically to drop you right into the fantasy. Since this prize is for the Color Unleashed category, their incredibly vibrant sets are ready to make your shots pop. You can dive into a neon soaked, CD PROJEKT RED certified Cyberpunk set complete with authentic props and glowing lights. If you want something magical, step into the shimmering underwater reflections of the Mermaid Cave or the ethereal purple tones of the Wisteria Forest. They also feature a vibrant Japanese Matsuri festival glowing with lanterns, a bright pastel Maid Cafe, and a stylized Zenless Zone Zero room packed with an active TV wall. Every single room is a fully immersive environment waiting for your creative vision, so you can just step on set and create something amazing!

Winner of Compositing

Oniric licence

This glow plugin is absolute magic! It calculates light falloff exactly how it happens in the real world, and the anamorphic flares you can stack on top are simply gorgeous. The blooms from even the tiniest light sources look incredibly realistic and cinematic. The best part is that it is completely non-destructive. You can jump back into a project weeks later and tweak your glows to perfection without ever ruining your original pixels!

Winner of Compositing

BreakGen licence

We all know presenting your art is half the battle, and this tool is a massive lifesaver! You just point it at your layered file, click generate, and walk away. When you come back, it has automatically created a slick, layer-by-layer animation of your entire process. People finally get to see the actual hours of dedication you put into a piece. Those breakdown videos always perform amazingly online, and this does all the heavy lifting for you. A must have.

Winner of Narrative Sequence

200 Retouch4me cloud retouches

Two hundred retouches in the Retouch4me cloud, and you get to spend them on anything in the range! Skin healing, dodge and burn, mattifier, skin tone, eyes, teeth, glasses glare, fabric, backdrop cleanup, the whole toolbox sits in one Apex panel, inside Photoshop or as a standalone app, with a live preview while you tune each step. The heavy lifting happens on their servers, so it flies even on a modest laptop, and you still hold every slider yourself. Save the recipe as a preset, point it at a whole folder, and every frame comes out matching. Try every tool, keep the ones you love!

For every participant

20% off Retouch4me

Everyone who enters gets 20% off Retouch4me plugins, plus free cloud retouch credits if you take out a subscription. Not just the winners, everyone! The discount covers the entire range, so Heal, Dodge & Burn, Color Match, Clean Backdrop, Fabric, Dust and the rest of them. Every one runs on your own machine and hands the work back on layers you can still edit, which means you keep all the control and only lose the tedious part.