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The Booker Prize 2026 longlist has been announced with 13 novels selected from 163 entries. Previous winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, along with Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, feature among the contenders. Three debut authors also made the list. Judges praised the selection for bold storytelling and works that challenge conventional ideas of fiction.

Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have once again secured places on the Booker Prize longlist, joining Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout and a diverse mix of established and debut writers competing for the prestigious literary honour.

The 13-book semifinalists, selected from 163 novels, were announced on Tuesday for the £50,000 ($66,000) prize. Historian Mary Beard, who chairs the judging panel, described this year's selection as literary “dynamite.”

James is nominated for The Disappearers, centred on a group of gay men in 1980s Jamaica, while Stuart's John of John explores father-son secrets on a remote Scottish island. Strout is recognised for The Things We Never Say, a story set in a small New England town.

James won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, while Stuart received the award in 2020 for Shuggie Bain. Strout was shortlisted in 2022 for Oh William! and won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge. The longlist also features writers with roots in Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Turkiye and the United States.