100 Years of Leica I

In 2025, Leica Camera AG marked the 100th anniversary of the Leica I's public debut at the Leipzig Spring Fair in March 1925. That camera — designed by Oskar Barnack and championed by Ernst Leitz II — launched the era of 35mm still photography and with it, modern photojournalism, street photography, and eventually the entire compact camera industry.

To mark the centenary, Leica produced limited anniversary editions, hosted events at its headquarters in Wetzlar and at Leica Galerie locations worldwide, and commissioned retrospectives on the hundred years of photographic history the company had shaped. The anniversary falls at a moment when the M system is simultaneously at its most technologically advanced (M11, M EV1) and its most historically aware — a hundred years in, the M bayonet introduced in 1954 still mounts the same lenses, and the rangefinder form factor remains in production.