The International Booker Prize 2026: Awards, shortlists and public opinion

It’s that time of year when ‘Winner of the International Booker Prize’ is the most important irremovable sticker on the cover of a book. With the winner of this year’s prestigious prize having recently been announced, fascination around this respected award has elevated.

Its grandfather the Booker Prize, established in 1969, continues to be “the world’s leading literary award for a single work of fiction”. Previous winners include Flesh by David Szalay (2025), and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (2019) which shared the award that year with Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. However, 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of its offspring. While the Booker Prize is reserved for novels written in English, the International Booker Prize commends the best translated works from all over the world, published in the UK or Ireland over the past year. BookTuber Jack Edwards describes the award as “a literary prize which celebrates books published in English, but translated from other languages originally”.

Publishers submit a list of 128 books, which is whittled down to a longlist of 13

So, how does the process work? Publishers submit a list of 128 books, which is whittled down to a longlist of 13. A judging panel made up of authors, writers, editors, and translators cut this down to a shortlist of just six books. A winner is selected by the panel from this shortlist. The 2025 winner of the International Booker Prize was Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhashti.

This year, the shortlist included authors and translators from eight countries – Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Taiwan, the UK, and the United States):

• The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin
• She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin
• On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan
• The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump
• Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King

In-depth overviews, critical comments, and judges’ opinions of each shortlisted title are available here.

Regardless of whether it wins or not, each shortlisted title receives a prize of £5,000. Therefore, being amongst the final six is high praise in itself. The winner of this year’s International Booker Prize was announced on 19 May, with the winning title, Taiwan Travelogue, given a £50,000 prize, split between the author Shuāng-zǐ and translator King.

It serves to highlight the fundamental work of translation in the publishing industry as a whole

A highly important role of the International Booker Prize is the presentation of a wide range of cultures to its audience of UK readers. This year’s shortlist was described as “encapsulating a range of international experiences”. It serves to highlight the fundamental work of translation in the publishing industry as a whole. The Irish Times illustrates how the International Booker Prize “helped to drive a boom in translated fiction in the UK”. It also gives new authors high recognition and well-deserved praise, evident in a third of the 2026 shortlist being debut novels (Bazyar’s The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran and Karabash’s She Who Remains).

There are hundreds of book awards and prizes on offer in the UK and Ireland for established and debut authors alike. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, originally introduced as a feminine antithesis to the ‘male’ Booker Prize, honours literary works written in the UK by female authors. Previous winners include Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, and Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. The Waterstones ‘Book of the Year Award’ honours a book nominated and voted on by Waterstones booksellers that has been published in the previous 12 months. Previous winners include Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, and Sally Rooney’s Normal People. These awards work as an excellent marketing tool as the titles are released in numerous online articles, increasing recognition for these authors’ works. Awards run by shops such as Waterstones will also lead to advertising opportunities for the winning book in their stores, providing further coverage and promotion for the author.

If a book has a ‘Winner of the International Booker Prize’ sticker on its cover, it has been critically acclaimed to the extent that it surpassed other works

Thanks to apps such as Goodreads and Fable, the capacity to review books and to read others’ opinions is extensive and widely available. This poses the questions: is the idea of ranking books against each other unrealistic? And why do we as a society so strongly respect critics’ opinions of what makes a ‘good’ novel?

Inevitably, if a book has a ‘Winner of the International Booker Prize’ sticker on its cover, it has been critically acclaimed to the extent that it surpassed other works, according to the opinion of a panel of judges.

Each of these shortlisted novels brought something different to the table. The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran explores the journey of an Iranian family “from revolution into exile”, She Who Remains analyses gender and religion, The Director depicts the role of cinema in Europe under the Nazi regime, On Earth As It Is Beneath exhibits a penal colony in Brazil, The Witch discusses witchcraft and magic, and Taiwan Travelogue illustrates Taiwan in the 1930s.

Can we compare a narrative of self-identity with one of historical fiction? How do we decide the parameters on what can be compared, and what sets a work apart from others? Both of these are questions that are certainly floating in the judges’ minds. Will literary awards change in the future? Only time will tell.