World Literature Today Announces Finalists for the 2026 Neustadt Prize

World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced finalists for the 2026 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. This prestigious award recognizes significant contributions to world literature and has a history as a lead-up to the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The nominees (with representative texts noted) for the 2026 Neustadt Prize, which carries a $50,000 cash award, are as follows:

Yuri Andrukhovych / Set Change

Elif Batuman / The Possessed

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge / A Treatise on Stars

Robert Olen Butler / Had a Good Time

Safia Elhillo / The January Children

Mathias Énard / Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

Ibrahim Nasrallah / Time of White Horses

Yoko Tawada / The Emissary

Jesmyn Ward / Sing, Unburied, Sing

The finalists’ full bios can be found on the Neustadt website.

Nine Neustadt jurors, all creative writers and translators, chose the finalists; they will meet to choose the winner at the 2025 Neustadt Lit Fest, scheduled for Oct. 20–22. The literary festival is hosted by World Literature Today and the University of Oklahoma.

“We live in troubled times, and the Neustadt Prize, recognizing the best writers in the world, is a beacon of hope for the human adventure,” said Robert Con Davis-Undiano, executive director of World Literature Today, the prize’s sponsor. “Literature enhances our ability to recognize who we are and who we can become, and the work of the Neustadt jury year after year reflects the ongoing importance of literature in our lives.”

The prizewinner announcement will be made on Tuesday, Oct. 21, during the Neustadt Lit Fest, which this year honors Cherie Dimaline, laureate of the 2025 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Festival events are free and open to the public.

The Neustadt Prize is the first international literary award of its scope to originate in the United States and is one of very few international prizes for which poets, novelists, screenwriters and playwrights are equally eligible. Since 1970, it has been awarded every other year to a living writer in recognition of a significant body of work. Past winners include Gabriel García Márquez, Czesław Miłosz and Edwidge Danticat. The 2024 Neustadt Prize winner was Mauritian writer Ananda Devi.

Winners of the Neustadt Prize are awarded $50,000, a silver replica of an eagle feather, a prize certificate and a festival hosted in their honor. A generous endowment from the Neustadt family endows the award in perpetuity. To learn more about the Neustadt and NSK Prizes, visit neustadtprize.org.