Thirteen became six on Tuesday night. On stage at the Southbank Centre in London, the Booker Prize judges named their 2026 shortlist, and it is a list built on contrast: two former winners, one author who has been here before, and three writers new to the prize.
The six
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
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
Marlon James won in 2015 with A Brief History of Seven Killings; Douglas Stuart won in 2020 with his debut, Shuggie Bain. Elizabeth Strout returns to a shortlist she first reached with Oh William! in 2022. Harrison, Kennard and Perry are the newcomers, and Kennard and Perry are both poets as well as novelists.
Who dropped out
The longlist announced on 28 July had thirteen books, picked from 163 submissions. Seven fell away on Tuesday, among them Emma Cline’s Switzy, Gwendoline Riley’s The Palm House, Chloe Aridjis’s The Shadow of the Object and Djamel White’s All Them Dogs.
The panel is chaired by the classicist Mary Beard, with the poet Raymond Antrobus, the musician Jarvis Cocker, the critic Rebecca Liu and the novelist Patricia Lockwood. Beard’s summing-up of the six was a list of opposites: funny and uncomfortable, strange and domestic, shocking and quiet. On this evidence the jury has not been chasing a single type of book.
The one to watch
The record-keepers already have a storyline. Harrison is 81. If The End of Everything wins, he will be the oldest winner in the prize’s history, a record Margaret Atwood set at 79 when she shared the 2019 prize. Science fiction and fantasy readers have known his work for more than half a century; the Booker has taken rather longer.
Each shortlisted author receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner, who takes £50,000, will be announced on 9 November at Old Billingsgate in London. That leaves seven weeks to read six books, a lighter load than the 163 the judges started with.
