Booker Prize 2026 judges named

The judges for 2026’s Booker Prize have been revealed, as submissions have opened for next year’s award. The panel will be chaired by historian and author Mary Beard and she will be joined by 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 prize is awarded to the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1st October 2025 and 30th September 2026.

The "Booker Dozen" of 12 or 13 books will be announced on Tuesday, 28th July 2026, with the shortlist of six books to follow in September. The winner of the Booker Prize 2026 will be announced in November, and will receive £50,000, as well as the £2,500 awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.

Beard said: "I’m hugely looking forward to being part of the Booker team this year, and to getting down to business with my excellent fellow judges. Along with the excitement is a little apprehension – not least because, like many people, I’m quite a slow reader, so will have to learn how to speed up a bit.

"The Booker is a celebration of fiction and fiction-writers in all their wondrous variety, and of their tremendous power to make us think differently about the world. But it is also a celebration of reading and readers, in all their wondrous variety: at their library desk, on the train, curled up in bed; the quick and the slow; the confident and the puzzled. It’s a celebration of the impact that words have on us all."

Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, added: "So much contemporary fiction is based on history, or inspired by myth, that Booker Prize judges often find themselves asking: What is a novel’s role in relation to the past? What can the imagination do with facts? These questions offer ways to think about fiction of all kinds, and I’m delighted that the distinguished and much-loved classical scholar Mary Beard has agreed to steer this year’s panel.

"It’s a stellar group altogether: Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood each have a different feel for words and have each contributed something unique to the culture at large. I’m hugely looking forward to witnessing their alchemy as literary sparring partners, and, eventually, to sharing their choices with the world. I have no doubt that in reading together they will make the best books emerge even better."

In November, the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize was revealed to be David Szalay for his novel Flesh.