Dear Wikimedians,

The sixteenth annual Picture of the Year competition has ended and we are pleased to announce the winner: 

Saint John Church of Sohrol is a 5th or 6th century Armenian Catholic church in Sohrol, Shabestar, Iran.

Attribution: Farzin Izaddoust dar / CC-BY-SA 4.0

In both rounds, people voted for their favorite media files. 

• In the first round, there were 1050 candidate images.
• In the second round, people voted for the 57 finalists (the round 1 top 30 overall and top 2 in each category).

In the second round – the “three votes” was used – eligible users could vote for up to 3 finalists – each of these 3 votes counted equal. There were 2,360 eligible voters in round 1, and 2,971 in round 2.

We congratulate the winners of the contest and thank them for creating these beautiful media files and sharing them as freely licensed content:

1. 374 people voted for the winner, File:Holy SURP Hovhannes Church.jpg.
2. In second place, 348 people voted for File:The Bug Peek.jpg.
3. In third place, 332 people voted for File:Firefighter, Ashton Bay, March 2017.jpg.

View the full results.

We also sincerely thank all voters for participating. We invite you to continue to participate in the Wikimedia Commons community by sharing your work.

Thanks,
the Picture of the Year committee