Editorial

Staff · Issue 149, Mar/Apr 2026 · pp. 4

Products mentioned: Divevolk

Editorial Peter Rowlands peter@uwpmag.com UPY 2026 Competitions may not be everyone’s cup of coffee so if they are not for you, jog on; but for those who use them as a personal benchmark, UPY 2026 has once again shown that, without a shadow of a doubt, it is THE underwater photography competition. The reasons for this are many and I make no apology for highlighting them shortly but cast your mind back to when UPY was reincarnated from the Brighton Film Festival back in 2015. At the time there were several well established competitions but they all followed the same established path - quite high entry fees per image, heavy prejudging by the organisers and online judging to name just three criticisms. The situation was very similar to the iPhone when it entered an already saturated mobile phone market. It made no commercial sense to be the same and it was only by coming up with what was ne…