The Booker Prize 2026 judges are Rebecca Liu, Jarvis Cocker, Dame Mary Beard, Raymond Antrobus and Patricia Lockwood

Past Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have been shortlisted for the prestigious literary award again, after a selection process that the judges described as "a tussle".

Jamaican writer James is nominated this year for his latest novel The Disappearers; while Scottish author Stuart is shortlisted for John of John.

This year's other contenders are award-winning US novelist Elizabeth Strout, and British authors M John Harrison, Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry.

But seven books that appeared on the longlist in July have been jettisoned, and Dame Mary Beard, who chaired the judging panel, said agreeing on the final six "has been, to put it mildly, hard work".

Scroll down to find out more about this year's nominees.

James previously won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, while Stuart won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain.

Praising this year's entries, Dame Mary added: "English language fiction now is full of talent – talent old and talent new.

"It's full of wit, seriousness, pleasure, challenge, discomfort and real brilliance, and I think we should be rewarding our novelists a lot more than we do."

The other judges included former Booker Prize-shortlisted US novelist Patricia Lockwood, who said she discovered she was "bossier than I believed myself to be" when making the case for or against particular books in the judges' meetings.

"I was sort of standing up a lot and tossing books across the room and being really active. I was like, 'Wow, yeah, I didn't know I had it in me'."

Another judge, poet Raymond Antrobus, told reporters: "All of us individually had a different idea for a shortlist and then it was a tussle."

Lockwood jokingly added: "A tussle, yeah. We wrestled like pigs in the mud!"

Antrobus said the final choices are connected because they are books that "as well as having heart, also took risk".

"These books, we truly believe, cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence. These are very human books for the way they talk about and navigate a lived experience."

The judging line-up was completed by journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who said being on the selection panel was "a bit like being in a band".

He said: "The way a band makes an appealing noise is by everybody combining, in a way, and if you don't like that then you have to go solo.

"You get something that you couldn't get [alone] and no-one's in control of it and you make a good noise together. So I hope that's what this shortlist is, a nice noise."

Cocker read some of the entries while on tour, and said he joined one judges' meeting online while wearing a dressing gown in a hotel room in Australia at 02:00 local time.

"When you're on tour, it's quite dull when you're travelling so it was quite good to have something to read," he said.

"I became known for being in those meetings wearing a towelling robe."

An unexplained catastrophe, and the arrival of mysterious alien beings, have turned British society upside down - and a man and his elderly aunt muddle through on the Kent coast. It's the author's first Booker nomination, and he'd be the oldest ever winner at 81.

The judges said: "The End of Everything can be read as a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism. The landscape may be bleak, the catastrophe may be immersive, yet there still were moments we found ourselves laughing aloud."

This epic, visceral story revolves around a violent attack on eight gay men who had gathered to rehearse a queer play in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, and its aftermath. The New York Times called it "a masterpiece, the novel of the decade and possibly of the century thus far".

The judges said: "A Jamaican epic from one of the most impactful Caribbean novelists today; readers will love the shifting register of the dialogue and poetic phrasings, often pierced through with sharp, double-edged humour."

An out-of work actor gets a new role - being locked in a black bag during psychology lectures for an entire term as a professor's experiment. The story unfolds into a humorous and poignant satire that makes sharp observations about the state of modern masculinity and creative life.

The judges said: "In a wonderfully quirky campus novel, Kennard combines an absurd experiment with a moving story about human frailty, passion, confusion and identity. There's something for everyone here."

A modern-day museum curator is commissioned to recreate a past scene in a historic palace, and becomes immersed in the world of the young, reluctant king whose life she uncovers. It is the debut novel by Perry, who is also a poet and a former competitive trampolinist.

The judges said: "An affecting and lush jewel of a novel that moves between our present-day world to a medieval court and unsettles the idea that there's ever one universal historical truth."

Strout, a former Pulitzer Prize winner and double Booker nominee, tells the story of a high school history teacher in his 50s who feels adrift in modern America. When a secret emerges, he must face big questions about his relationships and life choices.

The judges said: "A novel that engages with the deeply divisive politics of present-day America, without itself becoming divisive. This is the kind of book we need now: a calm antidote to contemporary events."

The third novel by Stuart is about a fashion student who is drawn back to his home in a small, religious community in the Outer Hebrides in the mid-1990s. He and his father both nurse secrets. And both are called John.

The judges said: "A rich and moving novel about a father and son who live on a remote Scottish island in the 1990s, where small-town secrets and buried shame reverberate to surprising, devastating and even joyous effect."

The winner will receive £50,000 and will be announced in London on 9 November. The ceremony will be broadcast live on a special edition of BBC Radio 4's Front Row.

Longlisted books that did not make the final cut included Emma Cline's Switzy, which had been seen by some as a frontrunner for the prize.

"Believe me, this is a nailed-on Booker winner," critic Giles Coren wrote in the Times, external this weekend.

Dame Mary responded on Tuesday: "I know Giles Coren said he wants to eat me if Switzy isn't on the shortlist.

"Well, I'm going to get the cooker prepared and ask him how he wants me done."

Booker Prize longlist: See the 13 'dynamite' novels up for this year's prestigious award