The twenty artists shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2026 have been announced across five categories: Film, Literature, Music, Theatre, and Visual Art.
The Arts Foundation is a registered charity that supports individual artists and creatives in the UK with unconditional financial fellowships through the Arts Foundation Futures Awards.
Since 1993 the Arts Foundation has awarded over £2 million to the most promising artists in the UK at a pivotal moment in their careers to enable them to concentrate on their creative development, experiment, and realise their artistic potential.
The annual Arts Foundation Futures Awards support the UK’s most promising artists and creatives at a pivotal moment in their career, providing £115,000 in unconditional grant funding, awarding five transformative £20,000 Fellowships, with all Shortlisted Artists receiving £1,000 towards the development of their practice.
The vital contribution of the Arts Foundation Futures Awards to the arts in the UK is demonstrated by its past Fellows, many of whom are regarded as contemporary pioneers and have gone on to become leaders in their respective art forms, including: Wayne McGregor (1994), Alice Oswald (1996), Sarah Kane (1998), Asif Kapadia (2001), Ali Smith (2001), Rufus Norris (2002), Carol Morley (2003), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2006), and more recently, Simon Fujiwara (2009), Sam Lee (2011), Alice Birch (2014), Hollie McNish (2015), Evan Ifekoya (2017), Holly Hendry (2019), Onyeka Igwe (2020), Klein (2020), and Bethany Williams (2020).
The five winning Fellows, each receiving £20,000, will be revealed at a live Award Ceremony on 2 February 2026 in London at King’s Place. Mary Jane Edwards, Director of the Arts Foundation, said:
“The artists shortlisted for the 2026 Arts Foundation Futures Awards represent an extraordinary breadth of contemporary practice across film, music, literature, theatre and visual art. At a time of growing financial pressure on the UK’s cultural sector, we are proud to continue our support for independent artists. Awarding unrestricted funding to artists directly is vital to sustaining creative practice and reaffirming the transformative power of art.”
You can explore the Shortlisted Artists’ work on the Arts Foundation website and watch the Award Ceremony announcements via Instagram Live on the night.
Read the Press Release here.
The full Press Pack and Artist Images can be viewed online.
The Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2026 are generously supported in partnership with The David Collins Foundation, The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, and The Yoma Sasburg Estate.