Awards Record

Literature (fiction in English)

Booker Prize: winners and how it is awarded

The Booker Prize was established in 1968 and first awarded in 1969 for a novel written in English. Britannica says it was opened to English language writers worldwide from 2014 and reverted to its original name in 2019.1

Awarded byBooker Prize Foundation
Established1969
FrequencyAnnual
Prize value£50,000 for the winner (as of 2025-11-10 (2025 prize, as reported by Al Jazeera and AP))

How the winner is chosen

A panel of judges chooses a longlist, then a shortlist, and then one winner each year from novels submitted by publishers.

Winners

  1. 2025David Szalay2,3Flesh
  2. 2024Samantha Harvey2,3Orbital
  3. 2023Paul Lynch1Prophet Song
  4. 2022Shehan Karunatilaka1The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
  5. 2021Damon Galgut1The Promise
  6. 2020Douglas Stuart1Shuggie Bain
  7. 2019Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo1The Testaments (Atwood) and Girl, Woman, Other (Evaristo), a joint award
  8. 2018Anna Burns1Milkman
  9. 2017George Saunders1Lincoln in the Bardo
  10. 2016Paul Beatty1The Sellout
  11. 2015Marlon James1A Brief History of Seven Killings
  12. 2014Richard Flanagan1The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Notable facts

Britannica lists two winners for 1992, Barry Unsworth for Sacred Hunger and Michael Ondaatje for The English Patient, and two for 2019, Margaret Atwood for The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other.1

Britannica and Wikipedia both state that the prize was opened to English language writers of any nationality from 2014.1,4

Sources

  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Booker Prize (27 October 2026)
  2. Al Jazeera, David Szalay wins Booker Prize for his novel Flesh (11 November 2025)
  3. Anchorage Daily News (AP photos), David Szalay and his novel Flesh win prestigious Booker Prize for fiction (10 November 2025)
  4. Wikipedia, Booker Prize (27 October 2026)