Take a sneak peek at some of this year's most amazing wildlife photos!

Say cheese!

This year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has released a sneak peek of the images up for its top awards.

A polar bear, a rhino, a frog and a butterfly are among the stars in this year's competition which is run by the Natural History Museum in London.

This year the competition was HUGE with more than 65,000 entries!

The museum said photographs were judged anonymously on their creativity, originality, technical excellence and storytelling by an international panel of experts.

So, let's get on with it... get ready to go wild for these incredible photos!

16-year-old British photographer Jack Crockford took this incredible photograph in London.

It shows a swift bird with its wings spread, underneath a plane approaching Heathrow Airport.

Crockford watched swifts return to London after their annual migration from Africa, filling the air with their high-pitched calls.

Most flew too high to photograph, but a few lower-flying ones gave Crockford the opportunity to capture the picture he wanted.

Swifts spend almost their entire lives in the air, usually landing only to nest. You can learn more about them here.

Amazing work, Jack!

A black bear stopping for a dip in a pool in Southern California in the United States was photographed by Loren Elliott.

Elliott spent hours watching through the kitchen window of a local resident's home, hoping to photograph black bears that frequently pass through the garden.

This one was caught stopping for a dip in the garden pool.

This probably gave the person who owns the pool a bit of a fright!

This stunning image captures life from a seal's perspective.

Taken by Norwegian wildlife photographer Audun Rikardsen who rigged an underwater camera with a motion sensor beneath a seal's breathing hole, and then waited.

At 4am, a female polar bear approached and peered down.

Rikardsen then waited eight hours for the bear to move away before retrieving the camera and reviewing the images.

When he saw what he had captured, he said: "I was so extremely happy. I was screaming, so I probably woke up all the polar bears for miles."

Jens Cullman's amazing snap shows an African bullfrog lunging for an African babul butterfly.

Cullmann had noticed tadpoles on a previous visit after heavy rains and returned the following month to find ponds and puddles full of young bullfrogs.

He spent more than two weeks watching the young frogs "eat everything that moved".

As adults, African bullfrogs can reach 12cm (4.7in) in length and spend around 10 months of the year underground.

Do you think the bullfrog managed to catch the butterfly?

Ralph Pace captured a photo of a sea hare gliding through an eelgrass meadow in Monteray Bay in California.

Sea hares are a type of marine snail, found in shallow water and occasionally in rockpools on the low shore.

Pace saw the encounter as a hopeful image of "a gentle giant safeguarding the last green meadows of the sea".

By grazing on red algae, that can prevent sunlight reaching the meadow, sea hares play a role in restoring eelgrass, which is vital to coastal ecosystems.

Category winners, the grand title and the young grand title awards will be announced at a ceremony on 13 October 2026.

It will be hosted by wildlife presenters Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin and will be live-streamed on the Natural History Museum's YouTube channel.

The full set of winning images will be showcased in an exhibition at the South Kensington museum from 16 October to 11 July 2027.

So, do you have a favourite wildlife photo?

Or, maybe you've taken a really cool one before? Tell us in the comments below!