APEC Photo Contest: account and entry rules for entrants

The rules place the public-account condition under the heading for social media posts that make a participant eligible for the Influencer Award. The clause reads: "Your account and post must be set to public at the time of submission and remain public through the end of the voting period." It binds both the account and the individual post from submission until the voting period ends.

The same section states that participants who wanted the Influencer Award needed to post their photos on Instagram. The published text does not attach the public-account condition to entries made through the online form or by email; it appears only in the social media section.

The rules carry two further conditions that concern the entrant's account. The Influencer Award judging criteria state that only posts by the original participant account are counted, and the social media section asks participants to follow the official APEC account.

A post on this track had to carry the contest hashtag #APECPhotoContest2026, the hashtag of the APEC priority the photo represents, a tag of the official APEC Instagram account, a photo title and a location tag. The rules cap the posts as well: "Each participant is allowed a maximum of three (3) posts with one (1) photo each." More than three posts, the rules said, would result in disqualification.

The rules stated that "The three (3) photos shared on social media must be the same ones to be submitted via online form or email."

• Check that the account and the post are public at submission, and leave them that way until voting ends, as the rules require.
• Keep to the published three-post limit, with one photo in each post.
• Match each post against the required elements list before publishing it.
• Use the same three photos online and in the form or email entry.
• Leave the EXIF data in each file exactly as the camera recorded it.

The rules allowed a maximum of three photos per participant, whether the entry arrived through the online form or by email, and warned that submitting more than three photos would result in disqualification. Each photo had to have been taken in one of the 21 APEC member economies, with the location identified at submission, and had to be the original work of the submitting participant.

The technical requirements accepted any camera type, set the file size between 1 MB and 10 MB in JPEG format, and required that "Original EXIF metadata must be intact and unaltered." Minor adjustments such as colour correction, cropping and straightening were permitted, while compositing, collaging or photomontage were grounds for disqualification.

The rules also forbade watermarks, logos, frames, signatures or borders added in post-production, and they required photos to be submitted as individual image files. They stated, in addition, that a photograph could not have been submitted to any other photo contest, including earlier editions of the APEC contest.

Photographers could send in their entries between July 21 and September 13, 2026, and the clock stopped at 23:59 Singapore time. The Popular Choice vote opened on October 1, 2026, and ran until October 30, 2026, ending at 17:00 Singapore time.

Both windows had closed before the publication of this article, so an entrant checking the account rule for a later edition should read the voting period as the stretch the rules of that edition name.

Did the public account rule apply to every APEC Photo Contest 2026 entrant?

The published text places it in the social media section for the Influencer Award. Entrants who submitted only through the online form or by email are not covered by that clause in the rules as printed. The condition covered the submission moment and the whole voting window, because the account and the post had to remain public through the end of the voting period.

How many photos could one participant enter in the APEC Photo Contest 2026?

Three, as a maximum, regardless of the submission channel. The rules also stated that the online form, email and social media together did not increase that allowance for a participant. On the social media track, the same three-photo cap applied, with one photo per post and a maximum of three posts.

What file format did the APEC Photo Contest 2026 accept?

JPEG only, with a file size of at least 1 MB and at most 10 MB, according to the technical requirements. The rules also required the original EXIF metadata to stay intact and unaltered. They accepted any camera type, including smartphone, DSLR and mirrorless cameras, and did not permit watermarks, frames or logos added in post-production.

Did a post made from a different account count in the APEC Photo Contest 2026?

The rules stated that only posts from the participant's original account counted on the social media track. They also asked participants to follow the official APEC account as one of the conditions of the social media track. The disqualification section lets the organiser disqualify any entry at any stage for a breach of any rule set out in the rules document.

Before relying on any summary, read the rules the organiser publishes for the edition you want to enter, and check how its submission and voting windows sit beside each other.

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