Meet the 2026 MacArthur genius grant winners

Twenty people working in science, the arts, the humanities and public life have been named as this year's MacArthur Fellows, the awards often known as genius grants.

Each fellow receives 800,000 dollars, paid in instalments of 160,000 dollars a year over five years, with no conditions on how the money is spent. The 2026 fellows were announced by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago on Tuesday 29 September.

The fellows

This year's class includes researchers studying climate, agriculture, economics and memory, alongside artists, writers, historians, musicians and choreographers. Among them are:

• Vincenzo Vitelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of Chicago
• Holly Jean Buck, a sociologist at the University at Buffalo
• Felipe De Brigard, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Duke University
• Ellora Derenoncourt, a labour economist, and Elizabeth Ellis, a historian, both at Princeton University
• Kaiyu Guan, an environmental scientist at the University of Illinois
• Marika Holland, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Song Lin, an organic chemist at Stanford University
• Liangfang Zhang, a chemical and biomedical engineer at UC San Diego
• Kate Spradley, a forensic anthropologist at Texas State University
• Ariel Ron, a historian at Southern Methodist University

Artists and writers

The artists and writers include the choreographer Trajal Harrell, the Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim, the poet Layli Long Soldier, the artists Rodney McMillian, Chip Thomas and Vincent Valdez, the novelists Maaza Mengiste and Bryan Washington, and the saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins, who at 29 is among the youngest fellows.

Maaza Mengiste, an Ethiopian-American writer, is known for her novels about Ethiopia, including The Shadow King, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020.

How fellows are chosen

People cannot apply for a fellowship. The foundation says nominees are suggested by "a constantly changing pool of invited external nominators" from many fields, and candidates are reviewed in confidence over a long period. Most fellows do not know they are being considered until they receive a phone call telling them they have won.

The foundation says a fellowship "is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight and potential".

About the programme

The MacArthur Fellows Program began in 1981 and has named more than 1,000 fellows. Fellows must be citizens or residents of the United States, although some, like Christine Sun Kim and Bryan Washington this year, live and work abroad.

Why no strings?

The foundation believes that giving creative people money without conditions allows them to take risks, follow new ideas and spend time on work that might not attract other funding. Past fellows have used the money to start new projects, buy time to write or research, or support their communities.

British prizes

There is no exact British equivalent, but the UK has its own schemes to support creative and research talent, such as fellowships from the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust, and prizes such as the Turner Prize for visual art.

What the fellows study

The range of work is wide. The fellows' research includes how crops can adapt to a changing climate, how inequality has changed over time, how memory works, how sea ice responds to warming, and how forensic science can identify the remains of migrants who died crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. The artists work in painting, sculpture, sound, dance, poetry and fiction.