The 25 best sports photos of 2025 – and the stories behind them

Great journalism without brilliant photography is like Christmas dinner without roast potatoes.

Getty Images’ team of award-winning photographers covered more than 50,000 sports events in 2025, from grassroots tournaments watched by a few dozen fans to World Cups seen by millions around the globe.

BBC Sport brings you the best sports photos of the past 12 months – and the photographers explain the stories behind them.

Ever wondered how you get a picture at the top of the pole vault? What is a ‘star filter’? And how much does luck play a part in capturing amazing images?

Adam Pretty: I took this picture at the relatively new Surftown wave pool in Munich, where some elite French Polynesian surfers had booked private training sessions. Athletes use the pool to focus on training specific manoeuvres and aerials on the perfectly consistent man-made wave.

Mahmoud Khaled: I am always searching for grassroots football tournaments in Egypt’s villages and working-class neighbourhoods, where spontaneity meets pure passion. The Al-Qudah tournament in Sharqia was one of the most impressively organised I have seen, almost like a professional league match: huge crowds, co-ordinated team entrances, players from the lower divisions, and even referees who officiate in the Egyptian Premier League.

What I love most is the journey itself, from discovering the story to reaching the place. The real reward comes afterward, seeing the joy on people’s faces when they see their photos published.

Pool photo: The image – taken during the most exciting competition of the World Athletics Championships – illustrates Sweden’s superstar Armand Duplantis’ dominance in the pole vault final.

A tiny camera, no bigger than a pack of cards, was mounted next to the support for the bar, and a customised technical solution allowed the photographer to trigger it remotely and receive the frame live on his laptop within seconds.

Duplantis cleared 6.30m in this competition, broke the world record for the 14th time and secured his third world title. It is an exceptional achievement by the athlete and a fantastic piece of work by the photographer to capture the very best at the peak of the action.

Dean Mouhtaropoulos: Living in the Netherlands, I am lucky to cover speed skating, one of our national sports, although most of it is indoors.

Emilee Chinn: Geordie Beamish is shown going down after getting caught in the congestion of the early laps of the 3,000m steeplechase at the World Championships.

Cameron Spencer: As the northern hemisphere works through winter, we are fortunate in Australia to start the year with a major international event in the middle of our summer, the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Michael Reaves: This photo was taken during a Major League Baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Often in sports photography you can plan for the big moments and control factors with light, moment and composition, but other times luck comes into play. This is one of those moments.

Matthias Hangst: This photograph was taken during the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Leipzig. The event was held at the Leipziger Messe, a very functional trade-fair complex and not always the most visually appealing setting. The roof structure was full of steel construction elements with plenty of light reflections, creating a rather distracting background.

Yong Teck Lim: Photo positions at the World Para Swimming Championships in Singapore were fixed, making it hard to get creative. Still, China’s Jincheng Guo was impossible to overlook – competing without goggles, cap and tech suit, and throwing in his trademark bubble technique for good measure.

Maja Hitij: Trophy-lift photos may look simple, but they require a bit of planning. Agencies and photographers divide responsibilities and co-ordinate positions in advance because the entire moment lasts only a few seconds.

Judit Cartiel: During the second half of the La Liga match at Espanyol, Atletico Madrid’s Giuliano Simeone started a run down the wing. While following the play from the corner with my camera, I saw Simeone approaching the assistant referee. He collided with him and I quickly decided to keep the focus on the official. I was looking to capture a moment that was unusual in football, where the player usually takes the spotlight.

Hannah Peters: I had been looking forward to the Crankworx mountain biking festival in Rotorua, New Zealand, because it often makes good pictures, but was disappointed when I set off early that morning to clouds and no light.

Adam Pretty: I have been trying to photograph water polo from the beginning of my sports photography career in 1998, as it has the potential for some amazing images. But it is so difficult to capture them because of the nature of the sport and the unpredictability of the water – the splashes and speed at which the drama happens.

This image was extremely fortunate as the timing had to be perfect. I was not in control of anything apart from my camera, which was in an underwater robotic housing at the bottom of the pool. I had to rely on the match beginning at the perfect time, and the athlete diving in just the right way to pass through a tiny pocket of light.

Tom Banks/McKlein Photography: Viera do Minho, a stage of Rally Portugal, features undulating roads and landscape scattered with large, round granite boulders.

Having never shot this area myself, we hitched a ride up the mountainside to a remote stretch with the local 4×4 club – an experience in itself. After scouting various vantage points I settled in the valley and awaited the cars. As Adrien Fourmaux blasted into view, the fans delivered a perfectly timed wave of the Portuguese flag – complemented by the arrival of the low-flying TV helicopter.

Dean Mouhtaropoulos: Photographing the best athletes at the height of their powers is one of the many joys of my job. Covering the men’s javelin F46 final at the World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi, I noticed Guillermo Varona Gonzalez with a different pre-throw routine than most. Positioning myself low on the ground before his run-up, he would leap and double click his heels.

Seb Daly/Sportsfile: For the uninitiated, this is hurling – an Irish sport that is incredibly fast, very skilful and, as this image shows, highly physical. These two players are merely getting to know each other at the start of the match – a little “pulling and dragging”, as the locals might say, in an effort to throw an opponent off their game, to get into their head, assert a little dominance.

Maddie Meyer: In professional sports there is often such a distance between fans and athletes. It can feel sterile and as a photographer it can be hard to bring the atmosphere of the crowd and an athlete into one frame. Here Rory McIlroy ran to the adoring Europe fans after his team’s win over the USA in the Ryder Cup in New York.