The Booker Prize Longlist 2026 has just been announced. The longlist of 13 books – the ‘Booker Dozen’ – has been chosen by the judging panel and features novels from British, American, Irish, Jamaican, Mexican-British, Turkish-American and Scottish-American writers, a truly global list.
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Booker Prize Longlist 2026
Celebrated classicist, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard chairs the judging panel and is joined by award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; musician, writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood.
There are two previous Booker Prize winners on the list – Marlon James and Douglas Stuart – have already won the prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings and Shuggie Bain, respectively,
The year there are three long listed debut novels are Djamel White’s All Them Dogs, May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, and Kenan Orhan’s The Renovation. Djamel White, at 28, is the youngest author on the longlist. All Them Dogs is set in the west Dublin suburb he grew up in and now lives.
Elizabeth Strout,is nominated for the third time for The Things We Never Say, her critically acclaimed new novel. Strout was longlisted in 2016 for My Name Is Lucy Barton and shortlisted in 2022 for Oh William!
M John Harrison is the oldest on the list, longlisted for the first time for The End of Everything, his 13th novel. He was previously a Booker judge himself in 2022. Should he win, he would surpass Margaret Atwood as the prize’s oldest ever recipient as she was just a sprightly 79 when The Testaments jointly won the prize in 2019.
As well as encapsulating a variety of themes, the longlist ranges in length. Six of the books on the list are less than 250 pages long, with three under 200. The shortest is Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman at just over 140 pages, whilst the longest – Marlon James’s The Disappearers – is over 600 pages long.
Mary Beard, Chair of this year’s judges, says: ‘Great books have never been written to a single formula. 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.’
The shortlist of six books to follow on Tuesday, 22 September. The winner of the Booker Prize 2026 will be announced on Monday, 9 November. The winning author will receive £50,000, while each of the six shortlisted authors receives £2,500.
Here is the Booker Prize Longlist 2026 in full
The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis
Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
The Disappearers by Marlon James
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
The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams
Recent winners of the Booker Prize include Shehan Karunatilaka, Paul Lynch and in 2025 David Szalay’s Flesh.
Our Favorites from the Longlist
John of John by Douglas Stuart
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.
While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive.
But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.
Check out The 2025 Booker Prize