Picador’s Douglas Stuart and Gwendoline Riley make the Booker Prize 2026 longlist

Chosen from 163 books written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026, this year’s longlist contains a mix of fresh talent and established voices; up-and-coming writers and others who are deep into their careers. 

The panel of judges was chaired by historian Mary Beard, who commented:

'Great books have never been written to a single formula. We are confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone.'

'There’s the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there’s dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there’s the gritty and the magically mysterious; there are some that will please and some that may shock. And they are set anywhere and everywhere: Ireland and Italy, Mexico and Massachusetts, Jamaica and the Hebrides, universities, private planes and pubs, past, present and future. But there’s one thing they all share. Every writer on our longlist brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.'

The Booker Prize judges commented about John of John:

'A 22-year-old arts student reluctantly returns from Edinburgh to his home on the Isle of Harris in Douglas Stuart’s third novel. We loved the rich, textural detail of the story, which is set in the 80s and examines young Cal’s fraught relationship with his domineering father. There’s a vivid sense of time and place, as the island becomes the site of bristling tensions between secret lovers, feuding families, and a stand-off between tradition and modernity. This excavation of family, violence, and shame is woven through with beautiful imagistic detail, and – unexpectedly but wonderfully – shades of hope.'

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Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

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The Booker Prize judges commented about The Palm House:

'Most chilling story ever told: our literary magazine has got a new editor, and he’s coming in with some big ideas. A note-perfect portrait not only of certain rarefied London intellectual spaces, but also of the people that actually bring their own bloodstreams, histories, tastes, families, first loves, and lonelinesses to them, to make up that impersonal thing we think of as the Establishment. Who, in these places, has power, and how is that power wielded? Are we fated never to get a word in, to remain always a little hungry, a little thirsty – and did we really choose this path because we love literature? Told in a series of thrown spotlights, in some of the best dialogue this side of Henry Green, The Palm House is minimalist, precise, and indelible.' 

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Laura and Putnam have been friends for a long time. Theirs is a happy meeting of minds, with long evenings spent huddled in an ancient pub by the Thames, where they share office gossip, reflect on their teenage passions, and lament the state of the world.

Recently, though, Putnam has been harder to reach: he has lost his father, and the magazine to which he has dedicated his life has been hijacked by an insufferable new editor. Laura has her own problems: with a prickly mother and a tricky past, and in a beautiful and indifferent city, her day-to-day life is precarious. But as Putnam starts to sink into despondency, she must try to bring him back.

The Palm House offers us Gwendoline Riley’s trademark keen observation and wit, and leaves us - somehow - with a curious sense of possibility. It is a slender masterpiece from one of Britain’s finest prose stylists.

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Picador Publisher, Mary Mount commented further:

'It is thrilling to have two Picador authors on the Booker Prize longlist - Douglas Stuart for the second time for his completely beautiful third novel John of John and Gwendoline Riley, amazingly for the first time, for her vital and brilliant seventh novel, The Palm House.

Gwendoline and Douglas are two of the very best writers at work today - utterly distinct, original, playful and writers of sublime prose - and we are enormously lucky to publish them at Picador. 

If you haven’t read these two novels yet you’re in for a treat. We think they are truly special. And I’m very glad that the Booker judges seem to agree.'

The shortlist will be announced at an event with the Southbank Centre on 22 September 2026 with the winner announced at a ceremony on 9 November 2026. 

You can read more about the full longlist on the Booker Prize website.