The winner of the Booker Prize 2026 has been revealed, with English author M. John Harrison becoming the first sci-fi author to win the prestigious literary award.
Also the oldest winner to date, the 81-year-old took home the £50,000 cash prize for his post-apocalyptic novel The End of Everything. Set on the coast of Kent in the years after a mysterious crisis caused the collapse of society in Britain.
Harrison was shortlisted alongside past winners Scottish author Douglas Stuart and Jamaican writer Marlon James, as well as nominees including Rebecca Perry, Elizabeth Strout, and Luke Kennard.
Since 2000, there have been 26 Booker Prize-winning authors - including Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood, both of whom have won the award twice.
With M. John Harrison the latest writer to receive the award, here are the 28 books which won the Booker Prize from 2000 to 2026.
21. 2007 — The Gathering by Anne Enright
Irish writer Anne Enright took home the Booker Prize in 2007 for her work The Gathering. “The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968.” | AFP via Getty Images
22. 2006 — The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Indian author Kiran Desai became the youngest women to win the Booker Prize in 2006 for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. “High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time.The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphaned granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals. The cook’s heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home. Around the house swirl the forces of revolution and change. Civil unrest is making itself felt, stirring up inner conflicts as powerful as those dividing the community, pitting the past against the present, nationalism against love, a small place against the troubles of a big world.” | AFP via Getty Images
23. 2005 — The Sea by John Banville
Irish author John Banville won the Booker Prize in 2005 for his novel The Sea. “When art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. The Grace family had appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Mr and Mrs Grace, with their worldly ease and candour, were unlike any adults he had met before. But it was his contemporaries, the Grace twins Myles and Chloe, who most fascinated Max. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately. What happened next would haunt him for the rest of his years, and shape everything that was to follow.” | Getty Images
24. 2004 — The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The Line of Beauty by English writer Alan Hollinghurst won the 2004 Booker Prize. “In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens’ world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.” | Getty Images