In April 2026, the Booker Prize Foundation launched a nationwide competition to find three children aged eight to 12 from across the UK to join the adult judges to choose the winning book. The three child judges will be announced alongside the shortlist on Tuesday, 24 November 2026. Find out more.

As with the Booker Prize, the shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500 and the winner £50,000, ensuring that children’s prize recipients are given the same level of financial reward and recognition as their counterparts writing fiction for adults.  

The prize will be open to authors worldwide, both for books written originally in English and for those translated into English, as long as they are published in the UK and/or Ireland within the eligibility period. This fuses the eligibility of the two existing Booker Prizes. If a book that has been translated into English wins, the author and translator will share the prize money equally, as with the International Booker Prize. If a graphic novel wins the author and illustrator will share the prize money equally; if an illustrated book wins, the author and illustrator will share the prize money in a 50:50 or 75:25 split, as determined by the Booker Prize Foundation. 

UK and Irish publishers are now invited to submit their books for the 2027 prize. Eligible books are those published between 1 November 2025 and 31 October 2026. Key deadlines are staggered between May and June 2026.  

Enter the prize here.

The Booker Prizes have rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 55 years, helping to shape the canon of 20th and 21st century literature, transforming the careers of writers and building a global community of readers. The Children’s Booker Prize is the first major new prize from the Foundation in two decades, since the launch of the International Booker Prize in its original form in 2005. 

The aim of the Children’s Booker Prize is to engage and grow a new generation of readers by recognising and championing the best children’s fiction from writers around the world.   

Their nominated works will join around 700 books in the Booker library. At least 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books will be gifted to children who need them the most, ensuring that more children can read and own the world’s best fiction. 

The founding partner and principal funder of the Children’s Booker Prize is AKO Foundation, a grant-giving charitable foundation focused on supporting charities that improve education and the wellbeing of young people, promote the arts, and combat the climate emergency. AKO Foundation has generously committed to supporting the prize for its first three years. The development of the prize over the last three years has been made possible thanks to donations from a small group of philanthropic supporters.   

‘We are beyond delighted by the enthusiastic response to the news, late last year, that we would be launching a Children’s Booker Prize. And we’re hugely grateful to AKO Foundation for making it possible.   

‘Now we have three phenomenal adult judges at the ready: the trailblazing children’s book author, screenwriter and champion of children’s rights Frank Cottrell-Boyce; the brilliant actor and comedian Lolly Adefope, adored for her performance as Kitty in Ghosts; and Sanchita Basu De Sarkar, esteemed owner of the nation’s oldest children’s bookshop and rarely out of a primary school assembly.  

‘Perhaps most exciting of all: we’re ready to invite children to enter our nationwide competition to become one of three child judges.   

‘This new prize is underpinned by a social mission: to create future generations of lifelong readers. We feel confident that we can enthuse children if we are armed with the very best. By ‘best’, we mean books that readers will love, books that can be read over and over again or enjoyed just once. Books that contain great characters, emotion, wit, action, adventure, imagination, magic. Books that take readers to other places – in the world, in their minds or in their hearts.   

‘To foster those adventures we are thrilled to be collaborating with Beano and Young V&A – organisations that spark joy and creativity in children. We can’t wait for everything that’s about to unfold.’ 

The Booker Prize Foundation will be working with publishers and a range of partners, including the National Literacy Trust, The Reading Agency, OnSide, Bookbanks, and the Children’s Book Project to gift and deliver the 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books each year to children who need them the most.   

We are collaborating with Young V&A on an unprecedented takeover of the London museum for the inaugural Children’s Booker Prize 2027 ceremony. Young V&A is designed to spark creativity in young people and families, and the event will be a high-profile celebration of books for young readers featuring exciting activities in the museum’s inspiring spaces, as well as the announcement of the first winner of the prize. A livestream of the ceremony will ensure schools across the UK can join in with the celebrations.      

We have also announced a partnership with Beano – the world’s longest-running weekly comic. As well as the prizes for child judges, the partnership will include bespoke illustrated content celebrating the shortlisted books and the child judging experience in the magazine, lesson plan content created and delivered via Beano for Schools, and a special presence at the ceremony at Young V&A on Tuesday, 2 February 2027.   

We have been working with Beano Brain, specialists in kids and youth insight, consulting children on the development of the Children’s Booker Prize, including co-creation sessions with eight to 12 year olds. We will also be working with the National Literacy Trust to measure longer term trends in children’s reading.  

News of the Children’s Booker Prize has been met with enthusiasm from key figures across the books world, including a range of children’s authors who have held the position of Waterstones Children’s Laureate, as well as the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association and Waterstones.   

Joseph Coelho, Children’s Laureate 2022-2024, says:  

‘I’m incredibly excited by the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize. This is a brilliant way to invite children into the world of words through a celebration of books, authors and illustrators. I fully welcome a robust prize that celebrates children’s literature in a manner equal to that which adult literature receives and one that makes essential space for the voice of the child.’ 

Cressida Cowell, Children’s Laureate 2019-2022, says:  

‘I am hugely excited about the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize. Children are the toughest critics out there, so literature for children has to be created with the greatest expertise. It has to be exciting, adventurous, funny and wise. And the stakes are the highest they’ve ever been, because children have more competition for their time than ever before: children’s authors and illustrators are fighting for the survival of a medium. Thank you to the Booker for acknowledging that they’re doing this with world-class creativity, and for supporting us all in our quest to get all children reading for enjoyment.’ 

Chris Riddell, Children’s Laureate 2015-2017, says:

‘It is great news that the prestigious Booker Prizes will honour a children’s book. The books we read as children stay with us and shape our future tastes in literature. It is exciting that the Children’s Booker Prize will consider the children’s books it chooses holistically – not only for the excellence of their prose and storytelling but the beauty of their design and illustration.’

Malorie Blackman, Children’s Laureate 2013-2015, says:  

‘The Children’s Booker Prize is a timely and very welcome addition to the children’s book world. Fundamental to the appeal of the prize is the fact that children are integral to the judging process. Children are an honest, discerning audience who deserve the very best stories and this award will highlight and celebrate the literary excellence to which they are entitled.’      

Jacqueline Wilson, Children’s Laureate 2005-2007, says: 

‘It’s a marvellous idea to have a Children’s Booker Prize. Now, more than ever, children’s books need a huge boost. It’s so dismaying that only 30% of today’s children enjoy reading for pleasure – and yet there are so many exciting and enjoyable children’s books out there, many sinking without trace. I think a Children’s Booker Prize, like the Booker Prizes for adult fiction, will become a talking point, signposting more children, parents, carers and teachers to the best new children’s literature. The prize will also be a level playing ground, so that new sparkling talented writers will have the same chance of winning the sizeable prize as well as long-established authors. Three cheers for such an exciting project!’  

Michael Morpurgo, Children’s Laureate 2003-2005, says:  

‘A Booker for children! Great news for children and books! And it comes at a moment when there is much anxiety about the enjoyment of reading amongst our young. A Booker Prize for children will stimulate interest and excitement in books amongst children and amongst grownup children too, shining a light on great writing for children, and crucially, bringing more children to a love of reading, which is such a critical pathway to knowledge and understanding. A truly welcome innovation for all of us, young and old alike. Bravo the Booker!’   

Anne Fine, Children’s Laureate 2001-2003, says:

‘When it comes to book prizes we all say, The More The Merrier, and especially when it comes to writing for children, which has all too often been the overlooked Cinderella of the book world.’

Bea Carvalho, Head of Books at Waterstones, says:   

‘The Booker Prizes provide us with two of the most prestigious and impactful moments in the bookselling calendar, reliably creating bestsellers and setting the literary tone for the year ahead. At a time when children’s reading for pleasure is so vital, when we should all be doing everything we can to help spark and maintain a love of books amongst the younger population, it is a huge joy that the Booker Prizes are adding a prize for young readers to their roster. Children’s authors deserve to be celebrated and this prize will be a gamechanger for any writers who are elevated by its shortlists. Everyone at Waterstones will look forward to championing the Children’s Booker Prize, and to working closely with the Booker Prize Foundation on reaching young readers everywhere.’ 

Fleur Sinclair, President of the Booksellers Association for the UK & Ireland and owner of Sevenoaks Bookshop, says: 

‘I’m 100% here for anything that shines a light on the joy, wonder and delight of children’s books! We all have nostalgic favourites from our own childhoods, but I’m especially delighted to have a brilliant new platform for children’s authors writing right now, and their newly published books. The Booker Prize has a long legacy of championing noteworthy books for adult readers, so I’m excited to see whole families, the older members and soon the young as well, coming together to read and celebrate great new books uplifted by the Booker Prize spotlight.’ 

Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, says:  

‘The decline in children’s reading for enjoyment is a tragedy and we should all be doing our best to turn that trend around. Going into the National Year of Reading in 2026, it is so important that authors, publishers, booksellers, prizes, reading charities and all those invested in solving this societal issue support and reinforce each other for the greatest impact possible. The fact that the Booker has stepped up to the plate with the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize is hugely exciting. A high-profile award for children’s fiction is a great opportunity to showcase some of the brilliant books available for children and it could not be launching at a more important time.’ 

As plans for the new prize were taking shape, in summer 2025 members of the Booker Prizes team came across a letter held at the organisation’s archive at Oxford Brookes University.

In February 1971, less than two years after the first Booker Prize was awarded, the highly respected children’s publisher Judy Taylor of The Bodley Head wrote to John Murphy of Booker McConnell, at the time the backer of the prize.

‘Dear Mr. Murphy,’ Taylor wrote, ‘Knowing that there is a certain amount of rethinking about the terms and conditions of the Booker Prize, I should like to ask Booker Brothers if they would consider making an annual award to the author of a book of fiction for children.

‘As you know, there has been enormous progress made in this field of writing over the past few years, both in standard and in presentation, and authors such as Lucy Boston, Hester Burton, Peter Dickinson, Leon Garfield, Alan Garner, William Mayne, Philippa Pearce, Katharine Peyton, Stephanie Plowman, Rosemary Sutcliff, have all written novels for children which could well hold their own in competition with novels published for adults. But children’s writers have been sadly neglected for a long time in terms of awards.

‘The art of writing well for children is one of the most difficult of all skills. It is essential that the best writers should be encouraged to write for children. A Booker prize might well achieve that.’

In the year she wrote her letter, Judy Taylor was appointed MBE for her services to children’s books, and went to become the youngest woman to be made a director of a British publishing company. As an editor, she nurtured the careers of dozens of children’s authors, including Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, while in later life she became the foremost expert on Beatrix Potter. 

Sadly, she died in September 2025, aged 93, just a month before the Booker Prize Foundation announced that her suggestion would finally become a reality.