The Booker Prize Foundation has released the highly anticipated 2026 shorts for the Booker Prize, the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. The films feature a stellar cast of award-winning actors from film, television and stage performing extracts from the six shortlisted books. They can be viewed on the Booker Prizes’ website and social channels (@thebookerprizes) from 2pm BST here.  

The line-up of critically-acclaimed actors for the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist films are: BAFTA Scotland award-winning actor Lewis Gribben (Black Mirror Season 7,  T2 Trainspotting, Somewhere Boy); Olivier award-winning actress and director Kathryn Hunter (Poor Things, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Black Doves); acclaimed actor and author Paterson Joseph (Wonka, They Will Kill You, Noughts and Crosses); Emmy-nominated actor Himesh Patel (The Odyssey, Yesterday, The Franchise); BAFTA-nominated actor and writer Maxine Peake (I Swear, The Theory of Everything, Silk); and actor Savannah Steyn (RIDE OR DIE, House of the Dragon, Good Boy).  

The director for the films is Holly Blakey, whose work as a director and choreographer has included collaborations with fashion houses and music artists such as Burberry, Dior, Gucci, Rosalia, Yves Tumor and Florence + the Machine. This marks the second time that Blakey has directed films for the Booker Prizes; she directed the International Booker Prize films earlier this year, which have been viewed on the Booker Prizes social channels over 65 million times. 

 The Booker Prize 2026 shortlisted books and the performers reading the extracts are as follows: 

• The End of Everything by M. John Harrison – read by Kathryn Hunter
• The Disappearers by Marlon James – read by Paterson Joseph
• Black Bag by Luke Kennard – read by Himesh Patel
• May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry – read by Savannah Steyn
• The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout – read by Maxine Peake
• John of John by Douglas Stuart – read by Lewis Gribben 

The Booker Prize Foundation has created a series of six two-minute films for its two annual adult fiction prizes since 2022. The films have become one of the highlights of the prizes, with the Booker Prize 2025 and International Booker Prize 2026 films viewed online over a combined 132 million times. The films are award-winners themselves: the shorts produced for the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist, directed by Sasha Nathwani, won a Webby Award in the Social – Arts and Entertainment category and a Brand Film Award for Best Use of Digital/Social Media, whilst the Booker Prize 2022 films, directed by Kevin Thomas, won the Culture category of The Drum Awards for Marketing EMEA 2023. 

Previous featured performers include: Stormzy, Dua Lipa, Toby Jones, David Harewood, Will Poulter, Arlo Parks, Indira Varma, Rory Kinnear, Jason Isaacs, David Jonsson, Anna Friel, Jarvis Cocker, Eleanor Tomlinson, Michelle de Swarte, Caitriona Balfe, Adelayo Adedayo, Aisling Bea, Alfred Enoch, Adjoa Andoh, Tobias Menzies, Tanya Reynolds, Ambika Mod, Omari Douglas, Lucy Boynton and Peter Serafinowicz.  

Holly Blakey, director of the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist films, says: 

‘I loved coming back to make the Booker Prizes films for a second time. This year we wanted to push the visual language somewhere new, shooting much of it outside and finding something looser, more textural and alive in the process. It was less about narrativising the books for me, more about searching for the feelings they leave you with – fear, humour, the great voids between us, or something altogether more existential. Each film had its own distinct world, shaped by the book and the performer, and it was a real joy finding those different notes with such an extraordinary group of actors.’ 

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, says: 

‘Every year, the short films we make of extracts from the Booker Prizes shortlists draw more and more readers to the books. It’s been extremely rewarding to see this – hundreds of millions of people tempted by these ‘trailers’, and in greater numbers as we go on. 

‘It’s also a fantastic opportunity for us to work with a range of creative people in an art form adjacent to literature, and this latest set of films is our most ambitious yet: predominantly shot outdoors across a range of locations, with a stellar cast.  

‘Holly Blakey, who is directing the shortlist films for the second time after collaborating with us on the International Booker Prize films in May, works in a beautifully indirect, associative way. She reads the books, lives with them, has an intuitive sense of how they speak. Then she translates that into her own visual and sensory language. It’s a fascinating process to witness. 

‘Huge thanks to Holly, to Park Pictures and to our Head of Video, Jon Davenport, for finding yet another way to put these stories into the world. I can’t wait for you to see them.’ 

The films are produced for the Booker Prize Foundation by Park Pictures, whose work spans commercial projects – with clients such as Apple, Google, Nike and Adidas – to critically-acclaimed feature films and documentaries, including Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated The Perfect Neighbour, Sundance award-winner Daughters and BAFTA award-winner Earth Mama.  

The shortlist films are part of a tradition of Booker Prize screen adaptations. More than 70 books that have been longlisted or shortlisted for the Booker or International Booker Prize have been adapted for the big or small screen over the years, with several going on to win Oscars, BAFTAs and Emmys. They range from The Remains of the Day to Atonement, Normal People to The Handmaid’s Tale, Wolf Hall to Life of Pi, True History of the Kelly Gang to The Line of Beauty, The Underground Railroad to Small Things Like These, Hurricane Season to Elena Knows, and in the last year, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Harvest, Hot Milk and, most recently, Klara and the Sun.  

More about the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist  

The shortlist of six books was announced on Tuesday, 22 September 2026 at a public event at the Southbank Centre, London, by Chair of the Booker Prize 2026 judges, Mary Beard. Beard was joined on stage for the event by her fellow judges – award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; musician, writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood – in conversation with Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood. Extracts of the shortlisted books were read by performers Omari Douglas, Miquita Oliver and Prasanna Puwanarajah. The event was livestreamed on the Southbank Centre’s website and can be watched here.  

The Booker Prize has rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 55 years, shaping the canon of 20th and 21st century English language literature. This year’s selection, which was chosen from ‘the Booker Dozen’ of 13 titles, selected from 163 submissions, 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 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026.   

The six shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will be announced at the Booker Prize ceremony on Monday, 9 November at Old Billingsgate, London, at which the films will also be shown. The winner receives £50,000, a trophy named Iris (after 1978 winner Iris Murdoch) and can expect their career to be transformed.  

Spanning a range of genres – from dystopian fiction to contemporary realism, from campus satire to historical fiction – the shortlisted books explore what it means to be human in an ever-changing world and the communities and events that shape us. Both intimate and epic, personal and political, they provide meditations on familial bonds, identity, shame, love, loneliness, survival and the ultimate unknowability of others. They are moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying and hopeful.  

The interior lives of a rich cast of characters are vividly depicted by the shortlisted authors, from a beachcomber eking out an existence on the coast of Kent to an out-of-work actor paid to attend university lectures zipped inside a black leather bag for a psychology experiment; from a reluctant monarch in a medieval court under threat by scheming courtiers to a son returning home to his repressive father in a traditional Calvinist island community in the Outer Hebrides; from a teacher with a seemingly comfortable life in coastal Massachusetts who is harbouring a secret, to a survivor of a murderous homophobic attack in 1980s Kingston, Jamaica, set on retribution. 

Further reading on thebookerprizes.com: ‘Everything you need to know about the shortlist’  

The Booker Prize 2026 campaign is rooted in the idea of our individual reading lives – how our personal histories, interests and locations influence the role that books play in our lives and help us connect with others through great fiction. This year’s series of video shorts and photography showcase the Booker Prize judges, books and readers out and about, with the aim of encouraging everyone to delve into this year’s selection in their favourite spot this season and share their experience with readers around the world. You can see campaign videos here and here.  

Alice Ingall, Communications Manager at the Booker Prize Foundation, at [email protected]

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, and Holly Blakey, director of the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist films, are available for interview