Christchurch Photo Hunt has returned with a familiar but still powerful invitation: look through the boxes, phones and hard drives, then help the city keep the photographs that explain how local life has changed.

The programme, run through Christchurch City Libraries and promoted by ChristchurchNZ, gathers digital and physical photographs from the community. Submitted images can be made available through the Discovery Wall and become part of the permanent heritage collections held on Canterbury Stories.

The 2026 hunt asks residents to submit photographs and stories throughout October. Digital images can be uploaded online, while people with physical photographs are being directed toward library scanning options and a Digitise Your Photos event at Linwood Library.

The public value is not only nostalgia. A family snapshot, a street scene, a school event or a workplace image can become useful evidence for future residents trying to understand what ordinary Christchurch looked like in 2026.

The listing also points to the contest side of the hunt, with Riverside Market vouchers for an overall winner and People and Places category winners. That gives people a reason to enter, but the deeper payoff is civic memory.

For a city that has had whole streets, venues and neighbourhood routines rewritten within living memory, Photo Hunt is a practical way to keep small visual records from disappearing before anyone realises they matter.