Booker Prize shortlist sets up a November decision

Six novels are in the running for the 2026 Booker Prize, one of the world's most important awards for fiction, with the winner to be announced on 9 November.

The shortlist was revealed on 22 September, narrowed down from the longlist of thirteen books, known as the Booker's Dozen, published in July.

The six books

The shortlisted novels are 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; and The End of Everything by M. John Harrison.

Past winners return

Two former winners are back on the list. Marlon James won the Booker in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Douglas Stuart won in 2020 with his debut, Shuggie Bain. Elizabeth Strout, whose work includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, has been shortlisted before.

A Birmingham contender

Luke Kennard, whose novel Black Bag is on the list, is a professor at the University of Birmingham, where he teaches creative writing. His place on the list gives readers in the city a particular reason to follow the result.

The prize

Each of the six shortlisted authors receives 2,500 pounds, and the winner will receive 50,000 pounds. The Booker Prize is awarded each year to the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland, and a win usually brings a huge increase in sales and international attention.

How it is judged

A panel of judges reads every eligible book submitted by publishers, choosing the longlist, then the shortlist and finally the winner. The judges are drawn from writers, critics and other figures from the world of books and culture.

Readers have just over six weeks to read the shortlisted novels before the winner is revealed at a ceremony in London.