As always, there’s a place for every journalist and for every type of journalism, celebrating the work of reporters, feature writers, columnists, cartoonists, animators, reviewers, photographers and video journalists across print, digital, audio and video, and representing the epitome of excellence.

One new award has been introduced to the line up for 2025: Best Specialist Reporting, which sits in the All Media category. This award recognises excellence in specialist or beat reporting that demonstrates sustained and knowledgeable coverage of a specific area, topic, issue or subject that is not already covered in any of our other awards.

An update to the Photography category sees the reintroduction of the Best Photo-Story award, recognising the skill involved in photojournalism reportage – narrating a visual story in a series of photographs that gives viewers insight into an event or topic.

The full list of Categories and Awards on offer for the 2025 Voyager Media Awards is now available here.

The entry and judging criteria for all awards is also available here. Please read the criteria carefully as this has been updated for some of the awards.

The NPA is delighted to welcome ANZ Bank New Zealand as a new Gold sponsor this year, joining our other Gold sponsors Air New Zealand and NZ On Air. We are so grateful for the generous support from all of our sponsors in helping us to celebrate excellence in journalism.

The Awards will be held at the newly refurbished Grand Millennium Auckland, with the event to take place on Friday 16 May next year.

Entries for the 2025 Voyager Media Awards open on Friday 17 January, so start thinking about your best work from 2024 and which awards you’ll enter.

Fri 17 Jan 2025 – Entries open (10am)
Fri 21 Feb 2025 – Entries close (5pm)
March 2025 – Judging
Fri 11 Apr 2025 – Finalists announced and tickets on sale
Fri 16 May 2025 – Winners announced at a celebration at the Grand Millennium, Auckland

We are so grateful to have the continued support of our generous sponsors including:
Voyager Internet, Air New Zealand, ANZ Bank New Zealand, NZ On Air, Spark NZ, Sport NZ, Media Chaplaincy New Zealand, Media Copyright Agency (MCA) and Telum Media.

Without their generous support these awards would not be possible.*

Aotearoa’s national Media Awards have celebrated excellence in New Zealand journalism for 52 years. Originally known as the Qantas Press Awards, then the Canon Media Awards, Voyager Internet has been the premier sponsor since 2018. The awards are managed and promoted by the News Publishers’ Association which champions the news media industry of New Zealand.

Please direct any queries about the 2025 Voyager Media Awards to voyagermediaawards@npa.co.nz