Prize

Punchlines on president’s thwarted bid to have building named after him come thick and fast at Washington DC galaOutside the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a giant tarpaulin remained in place to conceal Donald Trump’s humiliation.Guests entering the national arts complex on Sunday night could not see the section of its marble facade where Trump’s name was recently erased to comply with a court order. Continue reading...

• Reports indicate that Vladimir Putin is losing control over Crimea, as residents are either desperately searching for fuel or fleeing the peninsula. • The instability is highlighted by images showing critical resource shortages and a growing exodus of the local population. • This shift is significant as Crimea remains one of Putin's most prized territorial acquisitions, signaling potential cracks in Russian administrative control.

Jane Allan’s winning Darling portrait prize painting has raised eyebrows after her Doyles art award piece was compared to artist Nicholas HardingAn Australian painter was “clearly influenced” by New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in a major prize-winning work, according to the National Portrait Gallery, after she was accused of winning a separate $20,000 prize with “an imitation” of a Nicholas Harding piece.The National Portrait Gallery has declined to comment further on the marked similarities between a 1982 work by Basquiat, Untitled (Two Heads on Gold), and a work by Lennox Head artist Jane Allan, titled Weight of the Mind’s Periapt. Continue reading...

The Windrush Prize will award £10,000 to the writer of the winning play, which will receive a run at the Arcola theatre next yearThe first prize dedicated to discovering and developing British Caribbean playwrights has been launched using compensation awarded to a Windrush victim who died before receiving it.The Windrush Prize for British Caribbean Playwrights, believed to be the first major prize of its kind in 30 years, has been established by Shereener Browne, the founder and artistic director of Orísun Productions and a former barrister, in memory of her late father, Myron Brown. Continue reading...

Pictures from photographer’s return to Lacock after 40 years were taken months before his death last DecemberThe images are colourful, characterful and thought-provoking. They capture a flower show, a Women’s Institute meeting, a scarecrow festival. A local vicar features, resplendent in a union jack bowler hat, as does a band of bellringers and a bulldog called Billy.Four decades after chronicling life in the picture-postcard English village of Lacock in Wiltshire, the photographer Martin Parr returned to document what had changed – and what had not. Continue reading...

Boseley won for her high-profile, multiplatform political explainer series, Parliamen-Tea: explaining the chaos of Australian politicsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastGuardian Australia’s Matilda Boseley has taken out one of the top honours at the 2026 Walkley mid-year media prizes, winning the award for innovative storytelling.Boseley won for her high-profile, multiplatform political explainer series, Parliamen-Tea: explaining the chaos of Australian politics, engaging a younger generation in national policy debate. The category recognises journalism that breaks standard structural moulds to reach and inform audiences through dynamic digital platforms and creative production formats. Continue reading...

Awards for prose, children’s writing and poetry, for writers of colour in UK and Ireland, come with £1,000Diana Evans has won this year’s Jhalak prose prize for I Want to Talk to You, a nonfiction collection on subjects ranging from Jean Rhys and Toni Morrison to lockdowns and the British monarchy.The book, described as a “pleasure and an invigoration” by Guardian reviewer Alex Clark, was announced as the 10th winner at a reception on Wednesday evening. Continue reading...

Short story collection All Around the World will be available for £1 in bid to widen access to quality fictionAn initiative that aims to widen access to Booker prize-winning authors is set to launch this week, as research finds that more than a third of UK adults find it hard to read books through to the end.The Booker Prize Foundation is launching a short story collection entitled All Around the World, including works by the Booker prize winners Anne Enright, David Szalay and International Booker prize nominee Nadifa Mohamed. The collection was curated by another former winner, Roddy Doyle. Continue reading...

A renowned academic, Wood was hit by a car as he was crossing a supermarket’s parking lot and later died of the injuriesGordon S Wood, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian, was killed on Sunday when he was struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot in Rhode Island.Wood, 92, won the Pulitzer in 1993 in the history category for The Radicalisation of the American Revolution, a landmark tome that advanced the theory of the break with Britain being at least as much of an internal social and political transformation as a desire to be rid of colonial masters. Continue reading...

• The Singapore Open 2026, a BWF World Tour Super 750 event, will feature a total prize pool of $1,000,000 (approximately Rs 95.7 crore). • Key competitors include world champions Liu Shengshu and Tan Ning in women's doubles, as well as top-seeded mixed doubles pair Feng Yanzhe and Huang Dongping. • India's Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand have withdrawn from the tournament, leaving Ashwini Bhat K. and Shikha Gautam as the nation's primary representatives.

• The BWF Super 750 Singapore Badminton Open 2026 is scheduled to begin on May 26. • Top Indian athletes, including PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen, HS Prannoy, and the duo Satwik-Chirag, will compete in the tournament. • This event is significant as these players aim to secure their first titles of the current season.

• Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival for his drama "Fjord," which explores clashing cultures in Norway. • This victory marks the second time Mungiu has received the festival's top prize, highlighting his continued influence in international cinema. • The event also featured a video message from 84-year-old Barbra Streisand, who accepted an award while praising the power of film to unite people.

• Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the prestigious Palme d'Or for his film "Fjord" at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2026. • The winning film is described as a thought-provoking drama centered on a Christian family living in Norway. • This victory marks the second time Mungiu has received the festival's top prize, cementing his status as a leading figure in international cinema.

• Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s novel *Taiwan Travelogue*, translated by Lin King, has won the International Booker Prize, marking the first time a work originally written in Mandarin Chinese has received the honor. • The novel is described as a "double feat" for successfully blending elements of a romance with an incisive postcolonial critique. • Yáng highlighted the work's focus on the complex legacy of the Japanese empire, noting that Taiwanese perspectives on colonial history are often a conflicted mix of nostalgia and distaste.

Jack Clark describes ‘vertiginous sense of progress’ and ‘profound changes’ to society alongside risks of technologyAn AI system will work with humans to make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within 12 months and tradespeople will be helped by bipedal robots in two years, according to the co-founder of Anthropic.Jack Clark described a “vertiginous sense of progress” in the technology and made a series of predictions, including that companies run solely by AIs would be generating millions of dollars in revenue within 18 months, and that by the end of 2028, AI systems would be able to design their own successors. Continue reading...

Garden featuring giant woman carved out of tree makes designer one of few female artists to winFeaturing a giant, slumbering woman carved out of a fallen tree, Sarah Eberle’s hauntingly beautiful Chelsea Flower Show garden has won the top prize.Eberle, now the Royal Horticultural Society’s most decorated gardener, is a rarity; she’s one of only three women to have won Best in Show at Chelsea as solo designers in its 100-year history. Continue reading...

The £20,000 award for writers aged 39 or under goes to Joy Is My Middle Name, a collection about navigating race, addiction and womanhoodA debut poetry collection with themes including race, addiction and womanhood has won this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney took home the £20,000 prize – awarded to writers aged 39 or under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age – for her debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name. She was announced as the winner at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas’s birthplace. Continue reading...

All Her Lives is only the fifth short story collection to win the prestigious NZ$65,000 prize in 58 yearsFirst-time fiction writer Ingrid Horrocks has won New Zealand’s richest literary prize for her debut short story collection, All Her Lives.The Wellington-based poet, essayist and memoirist won the prestigious NZ$65,000 (A$53,000, £28,500) Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction at the 2026 Ockham New Zealand book awards on Wednesday night. The book follows nine women across nine different life stages and generations, as they navigate politics, gender and motherhood. Continue reading...

Lai wins $60,000 literary award for her study of a young woman’s repression and rage as she struggles to juggle the needs of those around herSign up for a weekly email featuring our best readsAs the 2026 winner of the Stella prize, Lee Lai has established two new firsts: the first ever non-binary winner with her book Cannon, which is the first graphic novel to win the $60,000 Australian literary award for women and non-binary writers.Cannon follows the titular, queer Chinese woman living in Montreal on the “uncool side of [her] twenties”. Cannon’s real name is Lucy, which became Luce then (loose) Cannon – and much like her unwanted nickname, she shoulders responsibility without complaint. During the day she cares for her gung-gung (maternal grandfather), a former tyrant enfeebled by age, without any help from her emotionally avoidant mother; and by night she works in the kitchen of a fine-dining restaurant, corralling chaos into order. Cannon’s longtime best friend Trish uses her as a soundboard for all of her problems, and is secretly mining Cannon’s life as a troubling source of inspiration for her writing career. Continue reading...

• The first Nobel award ceremony since President Trump overhauled the board of trustees earlier this year is set to proceed with new appointees influencing selections. • Changes aim to align prizes with American priorities, sparking international debate on politicization. • Shift matters for U.S. soft power and could alter future laureate choices in peace and economics.

In a rare public appearance, Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams warned of ‘networks of powerful elites’ using wealth and influence to silence dissenting voicesMeta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams and the late Virginia Giuffre have jointly won the Freedom to Publish prize at this year’s British book awards, marking the first time the award has been shared.Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, was recognised for Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism, her bestselling memoir about her years inside Meta, formerly Facebook. The book makes allegations about the company’s internal culture and practices, including its approach to political influence, China and the wellbeing of teenagers. Meta has disputed the claims. Continue reading...

• Jannik Sinner urged Grand Slam tournaments to show greater respect to players during an escalating prize money row. • Novak Djokovic backed player power in the standoff with tennis's four major events. • The dispute highlights growing tensions over equitable compensation at top-tier tournaments.

Australia’s most prominent portrait prize was announced on Friday at the Art Gallery of NSW, where the finalist exhibition will open on SaturdayArchibald prize 2026 finalists: Virginia Trioli, Jan Fran, Ahmed al-Ahmed and more – in picturesRichard Lewer has been awarded the 2026 Archibald prize for his portrait of Pitjantjatjara elder, traditional healer and senior artist Iluwanti Ken.The New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based artist was announced as the winner of the $100,000 prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Friday. The judging panel, comprised of the gallery’s trustees, selected the work unanimously from a field of 59 finalists whittled down from 1,034 entries. Continue reading...

Authorities investigate Florent Montaclair over award given to himself and others including Noam ChomskyAt a ceremony at the French national assembly attended by Nobel prize winners, former government ministers, MPs, decorated scientists and academics, all attention was on a previously unknown literature professor.Florent Montaclair, then 46, a balding, bespectacled figure in an ill-fitting suit and rosé-coloured shirt, was receiving the 2016 Gold Medal of Philology - the study of linguistics – from an international society of the same name. Continue reading...

The painting by self-taught artist Sean Layh was chosen by the Art Gallery of NSW staff who hang the finalists, ahead of the main announcement on 8 MayArchibald prize 2026 finalists: Virginia Trioli, Jan Fran, Ahmed al-Ahmed and more – in picturesA portrait of actor Jacob Collins by Sean Layh has won the favour of Art Gallery of NSW staff, who awarded it the Packing Room prize on Thursday, ahead of the Archibald prize’s main announcement on 8 May.Layh, a self-taught painter, said winning the prize for his work – an oil painting titled The tragicall historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke – was “one of the great honours of my professional life”. Continue reading...

• HHS launched the $4 Million KidneyX EMPOWER Prize Challenge on April 15, 2026, to advance living kidney donation and patient-centered health technologies. • The initiative aims to spur innovation in kidney care through science and programs improving American health outcomes. • This effort addresses critical needs in organ transplantation, potentially increasing donation rates and access to treatments.

• The Kennedy Center confirmed comedian Bill Maher as the 2026 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recipient on March 26, 2026, days after White House denial labeled reports fake news. • Maher becomes the 27th honoree following Conan O'Brien and Kevin Hart; he quipped, 'It's like an Emmy, except I win,' in a Kennedy Center release. • White House communications director Steven Cheung called prior Atlantic reporting 'Literally FAKE NEWS,' and press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated Maher would not receive the award.

Comedian who called Trump ‘gracious and measured’ will win humor award the White House dubbed ‘FAKE NEWS’Bill Maher will win the prestigious Mark Twain prize for American humor, the Kennedy Center said Thursday, less than a week after the White House forcefully denied that the comedian, who has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Donald Trump, would win it.“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice-president of public relations, said in a statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse — one politically incorrect joke at a time.” Continue reading...