The final days of January 2025 produced a remarkable body of world press photos that document humanity at its most dramatic, celebratory, and vulnerable. From a historic shift in the Doomsday Clock to a landmark tennis victory and the first movements of displaced Palestinians after a fragile ceasefire, these nineteen images form an indispensable visual record of the times. This is the thirteenth set in our ongoing 2025 series.
Military, Conflict, and World Press Photos of Political Tension
India marked its 76th Republic Day on January 26, 2025, with Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers staging a precise flag-hoisting ceremony at the Wagah border post, roughly 35 kilometres from Amritsar — one of the most symbolically charged frontiers on the subcontinent.
Inside Russian-controlled territory, an officer from the Russian military commandant’s office checked identification documents during the Night City operation, a joint security sweep conducted by the Russian Interior Ministry, the National Guard, and the military commandant’s office in Makeyevka, Donetsk People’s Republic, on January 25, 2025.
In Bucharest on January 24, thousands gathered for what organiser and presidential candidate Călin Georgescu called The Great National Unity Parade in Tineretului Park, coinciding with Romania’s Union Day. Among the crowd, men dressed in costumes evoking the Dacians — the ancient ancestors of modern Romanians — marched near the Monument of the Heroes.
The human cost of the war in Ukraine was captured starkly on January 29 in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast, where Ukrainian soldiers rushed a woman to hospital after her vehicle was struck by an FPV drone attack.
Hope and Displacement: Gaza After the Ceasefire
Days after the Israel–Hamas ceasefire agreement came into effect, displaced Palestinians began moving along Salah al-Din Street on January 26, 2025, carrying their belongings and waiting at roadblocks for permission to return to their homes in northern Gaza. The image encapsulates both relief and uncertainty.
Sport, Culture, and Celebration
American tennis player Madison Keys delivered one of the tournament’s biggest upsets, defeating Belarus’s Aryna Sabalenka in the women’s singles final of the 2025 Australian Open. On January 26, Keys posed with the winner’s trophy on Brighton Beach in Melbourne — a moment of pure sporting triumph.
On the same date in La Paz, Bolivia, a masked youth joined colourful street celebrations marking the Chinese Lunar New Year, illustrating how the festival’s reach now extends far beyond Asia.
In Vilnius, Lithuania, a street performer captivated passersby in the historic Old Town on January 25, adding a layer of artistic life to the city’s cobblestone streets.
Paris was the backdrop for Christian Dior’s Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2025 showcase on January 27, where creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri presented an intricate new collection to the global fashion press.
Faith, Tradition, and Unusual Competitions
Hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees gathered at the Sangam in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, on January 25 for sacred ritual bathing during the Mahakumbh festival — an event held only once every twelve years, drawing pilgrims from across India to the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers.
Participants in the 11th annual Bathtub Race descended a snowy slope in Stoos, Switzerland, on January 25 — seated in bathtubs and dressed in elaborate costumes, in one of the Alpine region’s most eccentric winter traditions.
In the Tatra Mountains of Poland, competitors took part in the Kumoterska Gonba race at the Highlander Carnival in Żab village near Zakopane on January 26. The event features multiple disciplines, including sleigh racing, ski-skijoring with ridden horses, and skijoring, in which a skier is pulled across snow by a galloping horse on long reins.
The International Festival of Masquerade Games Surva filled the streets of Pernik, 40 kilometres from Sofia, Bulgaria, on January 26 with elaborately masked participants. Representatives from Italy, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, and Spain took part in the international segment of the programme.
Protest, Migration, and Social Stories
Hundreds of Brazilian indigenous people from the Amazonian state of Pará gathered at the headquarters of the Pará State Education Secretariat (Seduc) in Belém on January 27, continuing protests that had begun two weeks earlier. Their central demand: the constitutional right to education for indigenous communities.
A migrant caravan was photographed moving through Huehuetán, Mexico, on January 26, heading toward the country’s northern border with the United States — a visual reminder of the ongoing migration pressures reshaping policy debates across the Americas.
In Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, residents paid to enter a rage room on January 25, donning protective gear and using sledgehammers or baseball bats to smash objects as a form of stress relief — a growing urban phenomenon documented with striking visual effect.
Record-Breaking Feats and a Sobering Warning
On January 28, 2025, scientists Herbert Lin, Juan Manuel Santos, Robert Socolow, and Suzet McKinney gathered at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., to announce a troubling update to the Doomsday Clock. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — which founded the clock in 1947 as a symbolic measure of humanity’s proximity to self-destruction — moved the hands to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest the clock has ever been set in its history.
German aerospace engineer Rüdiger Koch, 59, was photographed on January 24 having breakfast inside an underwater habitat off the coast of Puerto Lindo, Panama, at a depth of eleven metres. That same day, Koch broke the Guinness World Record for the longest time living in the ocean, surpassing the 121-day mark.
Finally, on January 22 in London — with the announcement released on February 5, 2025 — the cast of the West End production Starlight Express joined BBC Morning Live presenters Gethin Jones and Helen Skelton to unveil Gethin and Helen’s Wheely Big Challenge. The pair will roller-skate continuously for 24 hours to raise funds for Comic Relief’s 2025 Red Nose Day, supporting people in need both in the UK and around the world.
A Week the Camera Could Not Look Away From
Taken together, these nineteen frames capture an extraordinary concentration of global events compressed into just a few days. For more standout photojournalism from the same period, explore our best press photos of 2025 from early January and the most powerful world press photos of 2025 – Set 5, both of which document the month’s other defining visual moments.
Whether bearing witness to conflict, tradition, record-breaking ambition, or the quiet dignity of protest, each photograph in this collection reminds us why documentary photography remains one of the most essential forms of journalism.
