Women’s Prize 2026 Winners Revealed: Fiction and Non-Fiction
The winners of the highly anticipated Women’s Prize 2026 for Fiction and Non-Fiction have finally been revealed at the Women’s Prize Trust’s annual summer celebration.
The awards were announced at an evening ceremony held in central London on Thursday 11 June, with both winners fighting off competition from five other authors in their respective categories.
Debut author Virgina Evans scooped this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction for The Correspondent, while BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet won the Non-Fiction for The Finest Hotel in Kabul.
The Correspondent is composed of letters to family and friends written by the stubborn and opinionated Sybil Van Antwerp, as the clock begins to tick for the 73-year-old. As her eyesight begins to fail, she attempts to repair her difficult relationship with her children, takes a final chance at romance, confronts unresolved parts of her life.
Members can listen to the award-winning audiobook here.
Julia Gillard, chair of Judges for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, called The Correspondent a “remarkable novel”, with “an exemplary combination of originality, excellence and accessibility.” She also noted that the novel captured the judges’ hearts and “should be read and savoured by all”.
Other authors and titles in the Fiction category include Flashlight by Susan Choice, Dominion by Addie E. Citchens, The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and Heart the Lover by Lily King.
Meanwhile, The Finest Hotel in Kabul documents the changing landscape of Afghanistan through the lives of the people who worked in and passed through the doors of the famous Inter-Continental Hotel.
Thangam Debbonaire, CEO of UK Opera Association and the chair of judges for the Non-Fiction category, called the book “a perfect work of narrative non-fiction” that will “move you to tears or make you laugh, or perhaps both.”
Other authors and titles in the Non-Fiction category included Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt, Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The lives and loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell, Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska, Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy, and Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century by Ece Temelkuran/
Both winners will receive a £30,000 prize fund, along with their respective category sculptures; ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the late artist Grizel Niven for Fiction, and ‘Charlotte’, gifted by the Charlotte Aitken Trust, for Non-Fiction.
