AFP Wins the Visa d’or for Photos of the Madagascar Uprising
MADAGASCAR · CULTURE
Key Facts
—The award: The Visa d’Or News – Roger Thérond, awarded by Paris Match, at the 2026 Visa pour l’Image festival in Perpignan.
—The winner: Luis Tato, a Spanish photographer working for Agence France-Presse.
—The work: His coverage of the Generation Z uprising in Madagascar in 2025.
—Where he is based: Nairobi. He has been AFP’s chief photographer and photo coordinator for East Africa and the Indian Ocean since 2023.
—The record behind it: The Rémi Ochlik prize at Perpignan in 2018, World Press Photo awards in 2021, 2025 and 2026, and Pictures of the Year International photographer of the year in 2023.
—The wider wave: Under-thirties also drove protest movements in Nepal, Bangladesh and Bulgaria during 2025.
The Madagascar Gen Z protests of 2025 have won photojournalism’s most closely watched news award, with the Visa d’Or News going to the AFP photographer Luis Tato at the Perpignan festival. The award puts an African protest movement at the centre of the year’s news photography.
What the Madagascar Gen Z protests were
The movement took its name from the age of the people in it, and it began over the ordinary failures of daily life. Power cuts and water shortages were the immediate grievances.
It escalated into the sharpest political crisis Madagascar had faced in years. Parliament moved against President Andry Rajoelina and the military stepped in, as we reported at the time.
The word Gen Z travelled faster than any organisation did. Similar movements ran through Nepal and Bulgaria in the same year, and through Bangladesh a year earlier, sharing tactics and imagery more than ideology.
Why the jury chose this work
The Visa d’Or News is given for a body of news photography rather than a single frame, which rewards sustained presence over a lucky moment. Tato was there through the sequence, not for its most photogenic day.
Perpignan has long been the place where the profession decides which stories mattered. A prize there pulls an event back into view months after the news cycle has moved on.
Paris Match funds the award in memory of Roger Thérond, its former editor. That gives it reach into a general readership rather than only a specialist one.
Who Luis Tato is
He is a Spanish photographer based in Nairobi. He joined AFP in 2023 and now holds the post of chief photographer and photo coordinator for East Africa and the Indian Ocean. That posting is why he was in Antananarivo at all.
His record is already unusual. He won the Rémi Ochlik prize for best young reporter at Perpignan in 2018.
Pictures of the Year International named him photographer of the year in 2023. Few working photographers hold that combination.
The case for a permanent bureau
Tato’s presence in Madagascar was the product of a regional posting, not a parachute assignment. Wire services that keep staff on the continent see stories early and stay with them.
The alternative model has thinned considerably. Many foreign desks now cover Africa through short trips, arriving after an event has already been defined by others.
The prize is therefore an argument as much as an honour. Continuous coverage produces work that episodic coverage cannot.
What images do to a political story
Madagascar is not a country that ordinarily commands sustained international attention, and its 2025 crisis competed with a crowded year. Photography is often what breaks that indifference.
It also fixes an account of events. Pictures made on the street become the reference against which later official versions are checked.
There is a limit to what any of that changes. The grievances behind the protests were structural, and awards do not restore an electricity supply.
Photojournalism’s own economics
The industry that produces this work has been contracting for two decades, as picture budgets shrank and staff positions became freelance ones. Awards have taken on more weight as a result.
Wire agencies remain the main employer of full-time photographers outside a handful of magazines. That concentration is why an AFP posting in Nairobi matters for what the world sees of the region.
Festivals like Perpignan also function as a marketplace. Editors, agencies and grant-makers meet there, and a prize converts directly into future commissions.
Madagascar since the protests
The island has kept making news for reasons connected to the same underlying pressures. It reopened its mining register this year after sixteen years, and its high court upheld a law reclaiming colonial-era land titles.
Rare earths have drawn outside money and outside politics, with Washington backing a US$150 million project. Young Malagasy are watching those decisions closely.
What to watch next
The festival runs through September in Perpignan, where the winning work is exhibited. Wider publication usually follows.
Watch too for how Malagasy outlets use the moment. A prize awarded in France often has its largest effect at home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won the 2026 Visa d’Or News prize?
Luis Tato, a Spanish photographer working for Agence France-Presse. He won for his coverage of the Generation Z uprising in Madagascar in 2025.
What are the Madagascar Gen Z protests?
A protest movement led by under-thirties in 2025, triggered by power cuts and water shortages. It escalated into a political crisis in which the military intervened.
What is Visa pour l’Image?
An annual photojournalism festival held in Perpignan, France. Its Visa d’Or News prize is funded by Paris Match in memory of the editor Roger Thérond.
Where is Luis Tato based?
Nairobi. He has been AFP’s chief photographer and photo coordinator for East Africa and the Indian Ocean since 2023.
Connected Coverage
Madagascar sits inside the wider contest we follow at Africa: The New Scramble, with the regional file at Eastern Africa. See also the reopening of the island’s mining register and Washington’s backing for a rare earths mine there.
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