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Just to provide a little more context on the judging and outcomes.
Like I said I found the standard of entries even higher than last year, with the exception of the over-under category, where I there were only a dozen of entries I personally really liked (hint hint: shoot more split shots this year and aim at this category in DPG Masters 2026!).
Everyone who entered will received (has received?) an email indicating how far their images have progressed through the rounds.
=> If you made it to the 2nd round, you’re already in the top 35% of the 2,000+ images entered.
=> if you made it to the 3rd round, you can be proud of yourself, you’re in the top 7% of entries which is a significant achievement, and a good indication that your photo has some competition potential (I would exclude non-finalists in the over-under category from this statement).
=> the finalists are our top 4.5%, which are made of the round 3 images, re-scored by jury members individually, and the top 10 in each category got re-ranked according to these combined score. You know your image was a finalist if you were asked for a RAW file.
From there, some finalists have been discarded for not passing the RAW compliance check, but these are still strong contenders for other competitions which are more liberal with editing rules (e.g. UPY, OPY, …).
Hope this is helpful, feel free to post any questions on the judging here, and thanks again to all who entered, it was an honour to see and assess your work.