Win the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist!
Celebrating the world's best fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland, the Booker Prize has just revealed its 2026 shortlist – we have a complete set to give away.
'Shocking, understated, discomfiting, hilarious'
The Booker Prize is the leading literary award for a single work of fiction in the English-speaking world. Spanning a range of genres – from dystopian fiction to contemporary realism, from campus satire to historical fiction – this year's 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 mediations on familial bonds, identity, shame, love, loneliness, survival, and the ultimate unknowability of others. They are moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying, and hopeful.
We're delighted to give away the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist for one reader to enjoy this autumn, as well as a limited-edition Booker Prize 2026 tote bag, illustrated by Bill Rebholz. 
The 2026 shortlist:
- 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
The Booker Prize 2026 ceremony will take place on Monday 9th November in London and will be broadcast live in a special edition of BBC Radio 4's flagship arts programme Front Row at 9.30pm, and available on BBC
Sounds. The ceremony will be livestreamed on the Booker Prizes' social channels, along with interviews from the red carpet. The winner will receive £50,000 and a trophy named Iris (after 1978 winner Iris Murdoch).
Find out more about the shortlisted titles over on the Booker Prize website.
'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.'
Mary Beard, Chair of the Booker Prize 2026 judges
Gift cards
Give a gift beyond words
Give recipients of all ages the excitement of choosing a book as well as the joy of reading it.
Gift cards
Buy and spend in bookshops everywhere
Visit one of the hundreds of bookshops in the UK & Ireland that accept National Book Tokens.
Discover
Discover our prize draws
Don't miss our competitions to win signed books and exciting prizes, including National Book Tokens galore.
