Happiest photos of the year: Heartwarming images from around the world

A series of sweet images has been compiled as part of a worldwide contest to find the “50 happiest photos of the year”.

The competition, called #Happiness2020, was launched by free-to-use photography app Agora, and received more than 16,750 entries from professional and amateur photographers around the world.

The top 50 photographs showcase talent from 19 different countries across five continents: from Myanmar, Nepal, and Egypt, to Australia, UK, France and Spain.

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Users of the Agora Images app are now invited to vote for their favourite of the 50 finalists, to help the judges decide, with the winner to be revealed on 2 January 2020.

The joy-rendering images range from a 95-year-old couple photographed in a village in Vietnam to a woman befriending an elephant in Myanmar.

Another photograph is of women chatting and joking while they do their daily work at a rice plantation, and a pair of children playing together in Papua, Indonesia.

Click through the gallery below to see some of the photographs that made the shortlist.