Booker Prize Longlist Announced

Photo: © Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize Foundation

This year’s Booker Prize longlist, the 13 novels up for one of the world’s top literary awards, has been announced. The books were selected from 163 submissions. 

The novels were selected by the judging panel which is headed by the Cambridge University classicist Mary Beard.

Although the majority of the nominees are from the UK, a total of seven nationalities are represented in the list. Past winners Douglas Stuart—who took the prize in 2020 with Shuggie Bain—and Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings, 2015) are once again up for the award.  

The list contains a diverse selection of fiction: from the disorienting sci-fi of The End of Everything by M. John Harrison to the tense campus novel The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams.

Other members of the judging panel include the poet Raymond Antrobus, Brit pop legend Jarvis Cocker, the journalist and editor Rebecca Liu and writer Patricia Lockwood.

The full Booker Prize 2026 longlist is:

The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis 

Switzy by Emma Cline

Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman 

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

The Disappearers by Marlon James

Black Bag by Luke Kennard

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry

The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley 

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

John of John by Douglas Stuart

All Them Dogs by Djamel White

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams

The shortlist announcement will take place on the 22nd September, at the Southbank Centre in London and the winner will be made public on 9th November. 

Photo: © Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize Foundation