Retrieve the default image from an image field programatically
The default image is stored in field configuration. You can retrieve it as follows:

&lt;?php

use Drupal\field\Entity\FieldConfig;

$field_info = FieldConfig::loadByName('node', 'article', 'field_image');
$image_uuid = $field_info-&gt;getSetting('default_image')['uuid'];
$image = Drupal::service('entity.repository')-&gt;loadEntityByUuid('file', $image_uuid);
$image_uri = $image-&gt;getFileUri();