The 2026 Nikon Small World competitions have honored a collection of microscope images and videos that reveal the intricate activity inside living cells, from mitochondria weaving through the leaf cells of a kitchen houseplant to a parasite nest inside a host cell.
Winning entries in the 2026 Nikon Small World competitions reveal the hidden interactions that govern everyday life, from mitochondria darting through plant cells to calcium flashing through beating heart muscle.
The contests, established in 1974, honor excellence in microscopy and chart both the evolution of creative photomicrography and the progress of imaging technology, according to Quanta Magazine.
Among this year's honorees is Patrick Hickey, a mycologist at Hypha Research Ltd. in Edinburgh. On a frigid February morning, with the plants and fungi in his garden dried up, he snipped off an inch or so of a cold-hardy turtle vine hanging from his kitchen windowsill and took it into the lab. His time-lapse video, honored in the 2026 Small World in Motion Competition, shows mitochondria (green) weaving around chloroplasts (red) in the leaf cells. "It was absolutely alive with activity," Hickey said. The footage suggests mitochondria are more dynamic than previously thought and likely involved in cytoplasmic streaming, signaling, and interactions with other organelles, he said.
The galleries also feature neurons in mouse brain tissue captured by Kaelin Wulf and Rachel Flannery of the Allen Institute with a home-built light-sheet microscope, a 1.3-millimeter human gut tissue model grown at Wake Forest University and photographed by Gauri Kulkarni, and a video by Yasaman Maaref of Simon Fraser University showing how calcium regulates the beating of heart muscle cells.
Other entries include the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas disease, photographed inside a host cell by Richard Atherton of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "I also hope my image can get people excited about science, nature, and the infinite microscopic worlds hidden all around us," Atherton said.
Andrew Moore of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, meanwhile, shows how actin filaments reorganize mitochondria during cell division, shuffling their position "almost like a card dealer shuffling a deck of cards," he said.
Many honorees relied on confocal laser scanning microscopy, which scans fluorescently labeled samples layer by layer with a laser, producing images detailed enough to distinguish individual organelles.
Analysis
Why This Matters
- The images translate complex cell biology into something nonspecialists can see, which researchers say helps bridge the gap between cold data and emotional engagement with science.
- The footage challenges the textbook view of mitochondria as mere powerhouses, pointing to active roles in signaling and interactions with other organelles.
- The contests double as a record of how far imaging technology has come, since many winning entries depend on techniques such as confocal and light-sheet microscopy.
Background
Microscopy has been a window into the living world for centuries, and competitions such as Nikon Small World, running since 1974, have long paired scientific imaging with artistry. The techniques on show this year reflect a shift toward fluorescence-based methods. Researchers label specific structures with dyes, then a laser illuminates thin layers of the sample one at a time, so the microscope can build a sharp image plane by plane rather than a blurry single view. The result is a picture of the cell as a crowded, dynamic place, busy with organelles on the move.
Key Perspectives
Researchers and honorees: For scientists such as Hickey, Kulkarni, Maaref and Atherton, the images serve both research and communication. Maaref noted that a single video can reveal the beauty of living heart cells while offering quantitative information about their structure and function, and Kulkarni said photomicrography bridges the gap between logic and emotion. Atherton hopes his parasite image raises awareness of Chagas disease.
The scientific community: The observations feed directly into research. Hickey's mitochondria footage suggests new roles for the organelles beyond energy production, and Moore's video shows actin actively reorganizing mitochondria during division, observations that depend on modern imaging.
Skeptics and limits: Beauty is not proof. A striking image can illustrate a process without settling how it works, and a single sample in unusual conditions, such as a houseplant leaf in winter, raises questions about how general the findings are. The honorees mostly present the work as a prompt for curiosity rather than a final word.
What to Watch
- Follow-up studies testing whether mitochondria really take part in cytoplasmic streaming and signaling, as Hickey's footage suggests.
- The continuing evolution of microscopy techniques, which the competition entries track year by year.
- Whether images like Atherton's raise public awareness of neglected diseases such as Chagas disease.
