© Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize Foundation
Today, the Booker Prize committee announced this year’s “Booker Dozen”: a longlist of 13 books nominated for the UK’s most prestigious literary prize, which this year celebrates longform fiction written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 2025 and September 2026. The books on the 2026 longlist were chosen from a total of 163 submissions; the eventual winner will receive £50,000, and the shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500.
“Great books have never been written to a single formula,’ said Mary Beard, Chair of the 2026 Judges, in a statement. “We are confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone.
There’s the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there’s dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there’s the gritty and the magically mysterious; there are some that will please and some that may shock. And they are set anywhere and everywhere: Ireland and Italy, Mexico and Massachusetts, Jamaica and the Hebrides, universities, private planes and pubs, past, present and future. But there’s one thing they all share. Every writer on our longlist brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.
So without any further ado, here’s the longlist:
Chloe Aridjis, The Shadow of the Object
Emma Cline, Switzy
Makenna Goodman, Helen of Nowhere
M. John Harrison, The End of Everything
Marlon James, The Disappearers
Luke Kennard, Black Bag
Kenan Orhan, The Renovation
Rebecca Perry, May We Feed the King
Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House
Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say
Douglas Stuart, John of John
Djamel White, All Them Dogs
Missouri Williams, The Vivisectors
The Booker Prize shortlist will be announced on September 22, and the winner in a ceremony on November 9. In the meantime, you could do worse for an end of summer/early fall reading list…