AirVuz names its 2025 Drone Video of the 12 months — See the Winners

AirVuz has been celebrating one of the best drone video content material because it launched in Minneapolis in 2015, and The Drone Woman has been alongside for the trip virtually for the reason that starting — from judging the annual contest to attending the reside awards ceremony in particular person again when it was nonetheless a Minneapolis winter occasion. And as soon as once more, I used to be a choose for the AirVuz 2025 Drone Video of the 12 months contest, and the outcomes are in.

The 2025 subject displays two clear developments: the continued dominance of cinematic journey footage, and the regular rise of FPV as a critical inventive self-discipline quite than only a area of interest sport.

AirVuz is a aerial video-focused web site that has grown to grow to be one of many largest drone video communities on this planet. Its annual Video of the 12 months contest is likely one of the key benchmark for what’s doable in aerial filmmaking. Listed below are the winners, how they have been chosen and the way you would possibly win subsequent 12 months.

How the competition works

Each video you add to AirVuz.com is routinely entered into the weekly Drone Video of the Week contest — no additional steps required. Every week, 5 movies are chosen and one wins $250. That weekly winner advances to a month-to-month contest, the place one other spherical of voting awards an extra $500. Month-to-month winners routinely earn a spot within the year-end contest.

From there, the AirVuz crew critiques high-ranking movies from all year long and selects 30 extra wild playing cards to spherical out the sector. This 12 months’s pool was 42 nominated movies, judged by an exterior panel together with yours actually. Different judges included my mates Elena Buenrostro of Ladies Who Drone, prolific author and photographer Kara Murphy and Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE.com. All of us voted utilizing star score throughout a number of standards.

In line with AirVuz, seven of the 9 acknowledged movies have been wild playing cards — that means the judges ceaselessly diverged from the interior crew’s preferences. Entry is totally free.

Oh, and by the way in which, the 2026 contest is already underway, that means something you add now may win subsequent subsequent.

The 2025 AirVuz winner

Muhamad AbuShakra took high honors for the AirVuz 2025 drone contest with “Namibia | Land of Contrasts”, an aerial portrait of the southwest African nation filmed over 14 days. The video strikes from the Namib Desert (one of many oldest on Earth) to the Atlantic shoreline the place the desert runs straight into the ocean, to the rusted shipwreck Zella half-buried within the sand at Henties Bay, to safari wildlife footage that rounds out the portrait of a rustic that doesn’t get practically sufficient consideration from drone pilots.

The runners-up

Jay Christensen of JayByrd Movies earned a runner-up spot with “When You Fly – JayByrd Movies Reel”. Christensen is likely one of the pioneers of cinematic FPV content material creation, and his resume contains main consumer names such because the MLB All-Star Sport, the White Home and U2 concert events contained in the Las Vegas Sphere. His bowling alley video stays one of many most-watched drone movies ever made. Should you haven’t seen his work earlier than, this reel is an efficient place to start out.

Makhorov took the second runner-up spot with “The North Pole Journey”, which was filmed from a Russian icebreaker at one of the vital distant places on Earth. The North Pole sits atop an Arctic Ocean practically 14,000 ft deep, lined by constantly-shifting ice.

The finalists

Timelab.professional introduced a drone tour of Kazan, Russia — a reputation Drone Woman readers will acknowledge, as Timelab.professional gained the very first AirVuz Drone Video of the 12 months again in 2017 with aerial footage of Moscow. Almost a decade later, they’re nonetheless within the finals.

Different finalists included:

• FADAH_FPV, who captured Greenland’s icebergs.
• Eneour, who filmed Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago with a Pink Komodo, a DJI Mavic 3 Professional, and a GoPro on an FPV drone.
• onlythenico created “Iceland: A Symphony of Seasons” — hitting Gullfoss waterfall, the Dynjandí waterfall, the Vatnajökull icecap, the Dyrhólaey rock arch, the Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon, and an erupting volcano throughout 5 minutes.
• Skynamic — one other returning identify from the 2023 contest — delivered an FPV flythrough of the Thyssenkrupp metal manufacturing unit in Duisburg, Germany, one of many nice heavy industrial websites in Europe.
• zimydakid rounds out the finalists with “The Nice Open air.”

What’s value watching on this 12 months’s subject

The AirVuz 2025 contest is proof that FPV has matured from a racing interest right into a legit cinematic instrument. And I count on 2026 to be much more attention-grabbing. The Antigravity A1 — the world’s first 360-degree FPV drone — launched in late 2025.

After which in fact, the DJI Avata 360 arrived in March 2026. Each drones seize full spherical footage in flight and permit pilots to reframe any perspective in put up.

Filmmakers who enter contests like this one may have widespread entry to a wholly new inventive instrument versus the same old slate of latest drones that are typically nothing greater than a small spec improve. With these new drones, which supply the power to seize each angle concurrently then select your framing after the very fact, count on to see extra prospects that weren’t obtainable to any of this 12 months’s finalists. Whether or not that interprets into higher contest entries or simply completely different ones is an open query, however count on the 2026 subject to look meaningfully completely different from what we’ve seen earlier than.

For now, congratulations to Muhamad AbuShakra, Jay Christensen, Makhorov, and all of the finalists and nominees. You’ll be able to watch all of the successful movies on AirVuz’s web site right here.

And simply bear in mind, each add to AirVuz.com is routinely within the working for subsequent 12 months’s contest — and it’s free.

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