The 2026 longlist for the Booker Prize, the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction, is finally here …
The list of 13 novels includes authors representing seven nationalities and three continents, including past winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, and previously shortlisted Elizabeth Strout. There are also three debut novelists on the list, and we’re delighted to see that 28-year-old Dubliner Djamel White is one of them for All Them Dogs, published in March (John Murray). We loved this book immediately and have been telling everyone to read it. Congratulations to White on this thrilling achievement.
READ MORE: All Them Dogs – One Of The Most Thrilling Irish Debuts Of 2026
This year’s panel – who read 163 books each – included writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; and journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu. Mary Beard, chair of the 2026 judges, notes that these novelists “brilliantly muster the power of words to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.”
Beard says: “Books are not mirrors: they don’t simply reflect ourselves back to us. One of the many important things about fiction is that it helps us see what it might be like not to be us, to begin to understand the perspectives of others, and to imagine what it might be like to see the world differently. Great books are not cosy. In their various ways, the novels we have chosen are (we hope) dynamite.”
The Booker Prize has rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 55 years, shaping the canon of 20th and 21st century literature. This year’s selection celebrates the best works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 1 2025 and September 30 2026.
Booker Prize 2026 Longlist
The Shadow of the Object, Chloe Aridjis, Chatto & Windus (Vintage, Penguin Random House)
Switzy, Emma Cline, Chatto & Windus (Vintage, Penguin Random House)
Helen of Nowhere, Makenna Goodman (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
The End of Everything, M. John Harrison, Serpent’s Tail (Profile Books)
The Disappearers, Marlon James, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Random House)
Black Bag, Luke Kennard, John Murray (Hachette)
The Renovation, Kenan Orhan, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Random House)
May We Feed the King, Rebecca Perry, Granta
The Things We Never Say, Elizabeth Strout ,Viking Fiction (Penguin Random House)
The Palm House, Gwendoline Riley, Picador (Pan Macmillan)
John of John, Douglas Stuart, Picador (Pan Macmillan)
All Them Dogs, Djamel White, John Murray (Hachette)
The Vivisector, Missouri Williams, 4th Estate (HarperCollins)
The Booker Prize shortlist will be announced at the Southbank Centre in London on September 22. The six shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winning book will be announced on November 9 2026, and receives £50,000.
Djamel White’s debut novel All Them Dogs emerged from a short story, ‘Blue Opel’. After leaving school at 17, White volunteered in the Irish non-profit literary organisation Fighting Words – established by Roddy Doyle in 2009 – which reinforced his love of writing. At 21, he attended University College Dublin where he earned a BA in English and Creative Writing, followed by an MFA in Creative Writing, and was mentored by writers including Anne Enright. He has been the recipient of a Literature Bursary Award and an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.
The judges said of White’s book: “A ballsy, unsentimental portrait of West Dublin gangland, set well off the beaten track of the city’s usual literary landmarks. White has an ear for dialogue that is both racy and real.”
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