Front cover image competition 2026!

Each year Parasitology changes its front cover image to reflect the depth and breadth of ongoing parasitological studies across the world.

We are holding an open competition for our front cover image and welcome image submissions from our authorship and/or readership, whatever your relationship with Parasitology is.

Note that your submitted image(s) must be fitting for our journal and capture a poignant visual example of current parasitological studies and/or research.

There are no restrictions other than your images should be in colour and in a suitable resolution format for initial inspection.

Please submit your image (in PDF or JPEG format) with short supporting statement about its suitability by 31st October to parasitology@cambridge.org.

The winning image will be selected upon discussions amongst the editors and production staff, with the winner notified in mid-November. 

In December when the winner is revealed, we intend to feature a small selection of those images that made the final shortlisting. The winning designer and runners-up will also be featured in an article on the Parasitology blog. Take a look at last year's announcement blog here.

The front cover image for Parasitology 2025 features the protist Trypanosoma cruzi. This parasite is responsible for American trypanosomiasis or Chagas Disease in South America. It infects a wide range of mammalian hosts by stercorarian transmission from contaminated faeces of Reduviid bugs.

The photograph was taken by Ramiro Tomasina & Carlos Robello, Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Uruguay / Universidad de la República, Uruguay. 

A colourful image of trypomastigotes, these were observed under Ultraestruture expansion microscopy (UExM) inside a host cell. The infected cells were stained with NHs ester (labels the amino-group of all the proteins of the sample – in red), anti-acetylated tubulin (green) and DAPI (blue).