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The Booker prize foundation has launched a major new literary award, the Children’s Booker prize, offering £50,000 for the best fiction written for readers aged eight to 12.
The new award will launch in 2026, with the first winner announced in early 2027. It will be decided by a mixed panel of adult and child judges, a first for a Booker award. The inaugural chair of judges will be Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the children’s author and current children’s laureate. He will be joined by two other adult judges, who will help select a shortlist of eight books before three child judges are recruited to help decide the winner.
The Booker prize foundation will also gift 30,000 copies of shortlisted and winning books to children each year, working with partners including the National Literacy Trust, The Reading Agency, Bookbanks and the Children’s Book Project. The initiative comes amid reports that children’s reading for pleasure is at 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 chance to experience the happiness that diving into a great book can bring,” he said. “By inviting them to the judging table and by gifting copies of the nominated books, it will bring thousands more children into the wonderful world of reading.
“It’s going to be – as they say – absolute scenes in there,” he added. “Let the yelling commence.”
The prize will celebrate contemporary children’s fiction written in or translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. As with the adult Booker and International Booker prizes, shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500, and the winner will receive £50,000.
The inaugural Children’s Booker prize will open for submissions in spring 2026, with the shortlist and child judges announced in November that year. The winner will be revealed at a dedicated 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 has been met with widespread support from leading children’s authors. Former children’s laureates Malorie Blackman, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, Cressida Cowell, Anne Fine and Joseph Coelho all welcomed the prize.
Blackman called the award “a timely and very welcome addition”, while Wilson said it would “give a huge boost” to children’s books and offer a “level playing ground” for new and established writers alike.
Morpurgo called the new prize “great news for children and books”, and Coelho said he fully welcomed “a robust prize that celebrates children’s literature in a manner equal to that which adult literature receives.”
The prize will 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, chief executive of the Booker prize foundation, described the Children’s Booker prize as “the most ambitious endeavour we’ve embarked on in 20 years,” since the launch of the International Booker in 2005.
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“It aims to be several things at once: an award that will champion 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 the views of the ultimate judges of the quality of children’s fiction: children themselves.”
Philip Lawford, chief executive of the AKO foundation, said the partnership reflected the foundation’s commitment to improving literacy and social mobility. “The evidence linking reading for pleasure to improved educational outcomes and greater 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 prize through ongoing consultation sessions with Beano Brain, a youth insight organisation, and the National Literacy Trust will help measure long-term trends in children’s reading habits.
According to the Booker foundation, the new award represents an effort to place children’s books “at the centre 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 keep them company for life.”
Details on how children can apply to be judges will be announced in spring 2026.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker prize is one of the world’s most influential literary awards, honouring outstanding fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
