Pictures of the year 2025: Powerful images that defined the past 12 months

The gallery above contains images that helped define 2025, another year of major developments across the globe.

In January wildfires tore through southern California, leaving behind a trail of devastation and killing at least 31 people.

Even Hollywood A-Listers couldn’t escape the destruction, with stars from Paris Hilton to Mel Gibson losing their homes.

The Gaza conflict continued to dominate headlines in 2025, with multiple rounds of peacetalks, and a ceasefire agreement agreed in October.

Over 70,000 recorded Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, according to Gaza’s health ministry while 90 per cent of Palestine’s 2.1 million population displaced were displaced.

One powerful image from January 27 captured some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who flooded back into northern Gaza after Israel opened military checkpoints.

2025 ushered in a new era for the Vatican, with the sad death of Pope Francis in April and the election of Pope Leo XIV in May.

This historic photo of Pope leading the Regina Caeli prayer in St. Peter's Square was taken days after his election.

A powerful image that came out of his predecessor Pope Francis’s funeral was one of Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky speaking together. The meeting in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican came before the pope’s funeral service.

It came after a fiery clash between the two men in the Oval Office over US support for Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion.

Iconic rocker Ozzy Osbourne died in July with heartfelt tributes flooding in for the Black Sabbath frontman across the nation.