The UK-based Shark Trust has opened pre-orders for its 2027 calendar, and there's a twist: buyers won't see a single image before paying. Each month will showcase a shark or ray that placed in the charity's Shark Photographer of the Year competition, but the winning shots stay under wraps until late November.
The big reveal happens at 'For the Love of Sharks', the Trust's annual fundraising evening at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 27 November. That's when the competition awards are handed out and the calendar images go public for the first time. Calendars then ship in December, in time for Christmas.
The A4 calendar is printed on sustainably sourced paper and costs £9.99 plus postage — a tidy, low-stakes gift for the shark obsessive in your life, or a souvenir if you're the type who plans holidays around what's swimming beneath the boat.
The London event itself sounds worth a ticket if you're in the capital. This year's line-up pairs the awards with talks under the banner 'Sharks on our Screens'. Headlining is comedian Ross Noble, who appeared on ITV's Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters, alongside Tom 'the Blowfish' Hird, host of Netflix's All the Sharks, and wildlife photographer Kaush Subramaniam. All three will share stories from their encounters with sharks and dig into how these animals come across on camera — a fitting theme given the calendar itself exists because of a photography competition.
For travellers, this is a nice reminder of how much of the ocean's star power is captured by ordinary divers and photographers. If a year of shark imagery on your wall nudges you towards booking a dive trip — the Bahamas, South Africa, the Galápagos — the calendar doubles as inspiration as well as décor. And because proceeds support the Shark Trust's conservation work, the £9.99 does a bit of good beyond your kitchen wall.
