The Booker Prize launches a £50,000 children’s prize | books

The Booker Prize Foundation has launched a new major literary award, the Booker Prize for Children, which offers £50,000 for the best novel written for readers aged 8-12.

The new award will launch in 2026, with the first winner announced in early 2027. The award will be decided by a mixed panel of adult and child judges, and is a first for a Booker Prize. The inaugural jury chair will be Frank Cottrell Boyce, children’s book author and current Children’s Prize laureate. He will be joined by two other adult judges, who will help choose a shortlist of eight books before three child judges are appointed to help decide the winner.

The Booker Prize Foundation will also give away 30,000 copies of shortlisted and winning books to children each year, working with partners including the National Literacy Trust, the Reading Agency, book banks and the Children’s Book Project. The initiative comes amid reports that children’s reading for pleasure has reached its lowest level in 20 years.

Cottrell-Boyce said the award will make it easier for children to discover books they enjoy. “Every child deserves the opportunity to experience the joy that diving into a great book can bring,” he said. By inviting them to the judging table and gifting copies of the nominated books, this will bring thousands of other children into the wonderful world of reading.

He added: “It will be – as they say – absolute scenes there.” “Let the screaming begin.”

The award will celebrate contemporary children’s stories written or translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. As with the Young Adult and Booker International Prizes, each shortlisted author will receive £2,500, and the winner will receive £50,000.

Applications for the inaugural Booker Children’s Prize will open in the spring of 2026, with the shortlist and child judges announced in November of that year. The winner will be revealed at an event for young readers in February 2027. The eligibility period for the 2027 Prize will cover books published between 1 November 2025 and 31 October 2026.

The announcement was met with widespread support from prominent children’s authors. Previous Children’s Laureates Mallory Blackman, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, Cressida Cowell, Anne Fine and Joseph Coelho welcomed the award.

Blackman described the award as a “timely and very welcome addition”, while Wilson said it would “give a huge boost” to children’s books and provide a “level playing field” for new and established writers alike.

Morpurgo described the new award as “great news for children and books”, and Coelho said he thoroughly welcomed “a strong award that celebrates children’s literature in a way that is equal to that of adult literature”.

The award will be run in partnership with the AKO Foundation, a grant-making charity focused on improving education, supporting the arts and tackling the climate emergency.

Gaby Wood, CEO of the Booker Prize Foundation, described the Booker Kids Prize as “the most ambitious endeavor we have undertaken in 20 years” since the launch of the International Booker Prize in 2005.

“It aims to achieve several things at once: an award that supports future classics written for children; a social intervention designed to inspire more young people to read; and a seed from which we hope future generations of lifelong readers will grow,” she said. “We can’t wait to hear from the final judges on the quality of children’s novels: the children themselves.”

Philip Lawford, CEO of the AKO Foundation, said the partnership reflects the Foundation’s commitment to improving literacy and social mobility. “The evidence linking reading for pleasure to improved educational outcomes and increased social mobility is compelling,” he said. “We are proud to contribute to a project that will inspire and empower young readers.”

Children will also be involved in shaping the award through ongoing consultation sessions with Beano Brain, a youth insights organisation, and the National Literacy Trust will help measure long-term trends in children’s reading habits.

According to the Booker Foundation, the new prize represents an effort to place children’s books “at the center of our culture.” Wood said the goal was not only to reward excellence in children’s writing, but to help more young people “discover stories and characters that will stay with them for a lifetime.”

Details on how children can apply to be judges will be announced in the spring of 2026.

The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, is one of the world’s most influential literary prizes, honoring outstanding novels written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.