The Booker Prize is one of the year’s biggest talking points among book readers.
Late last week, the shortlist for the Booker Prize 2026 has been announced, featuring two previous winners, a previous shortlistee, and three authors new to the prize.
Run by the Booker Prize Foundation, every year they award the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize, two of the world’s most significant and influential awards for a single book.
The prizes recognise exceptional works of fiction and elevate the voices of nominated authors and translators by bringing their work to a global readership. The winners often see their careers be transformed, as they become further recognised.
Across social media, bibliophiles take on the challenge of reading many of the highlighted books, and weigh-in on what their personal likes and favourites are.
"We are driven by a simple belief that great fiction not only brings joy to millions, it has the power to change the way we think about the world and to connect people across cultures and generations. Our aim is to foster a love of reading, and to support writers and readers of the future," the foundation said.
"As a registered charity, the Foundation is committed to ensuring that literature is a vital and inclusive part of the cultural landscape."
The shortlist of six books has been selected by the 2026 judging panel, chaired by celebrated classicist, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard.
Beard is joined by award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; musician, writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood.
The shortlisted books are:
- The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
- The Disappearers by Marlon James
- Black Bag by Luke Kennard
- May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
- The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
- John of John by Douglas Stuart
Chair of the Booker Prize 2026 judges, Beard, said: "These novels range from the hilarious to the discomfiting, from the frighteningly strange to the alarmingly domestic, from the powerfully shocking to the intriguingly understated. In them, we meet characters from different countries and different centuries, created by authors 40 years apart, new talent and well-known favourites.
"This is writing at its best. There’s plenty to enjoy, some blissful escapism and prose to die for (‘I just wish I could have written that’ kept going through my mind). But there is also plenty here to change the way we see the world, to surprise us and to challenge our certainties," she said.
The prize has rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 55 years, shaping the canon of 20th and 21st century English language literature.
This year’s selection, which was chosen from ‘the Booker Dozen’ of 13 titles, selected from 163 submissions, celebrates the best works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026.
Spanning a range of genres – from dystopian fiction to contemporary realism, from campus satire to historical fiction – the shortlisted books explore what it means to be human in an ever-changing world and the communities and events that shape us.
Both intimate and epic, personal and political, they provide meditations on familial bonds, identity, shame, love, loneliness, survival and the ultimate unknowability of others. They are moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying and hopeful.
The interior lives of a rich cast of characters are vividly depicted by the shortlisted authors, from a beachcomber eking out an existence on the coast of Kent to an out-of-work actor paid to attend university lectures zipped inside a black leather bag for a psychology experiment; from a reluctant monarch in a medieval court under threat by scheming courtiers to a son returning home to his repressive father in a traditional Calvinist island community in the Outer Hebrides; from a teacher with a seemingly comfortable life in coastal Massachusetts who is harbouring a secret, to a survivor of a murderous homophobic attack in 1980s Kingston, Jamaica, set on retribution.
The shortlist features authors representing four countries: England, Scotland, Jamaica and the USA.
The list includes previous Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart and three-time nominee Elizabeth Strout. Half of the judges’ selection features writers making their inaugural appearance on a Booker Prize shortlist.
The winning book will be announced on Monday, 9 November 2026 at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London. The winner will receive £50,000 (R1,079,765), while the shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500 (R54,298).