Today, the UK’s Women’s Prize Trust announced the winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, which “champions excellence, originality, and accessibility in women’s writing,” and is awarded to the best novel of each year written in English and published in the UK, and the winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, which celebrates the same in narrative nonfiction.

The winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction is Virginia Evans for The Correspondent, “an uplifting and moving novel that confronts the hubris of youth with the wisdom of older age.”

The winner of the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction is Lyse Doucet for The Finest Hotel in Kabul, “a richly crafted recent history of modern Afghanistan.”

Each winner will receive a purse of £30,000. Evans will also take home the “Bessie,” a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven, while Doucet will be gifted the “Charlotte,” a limited-edition artwork donated by the Charlotte Aitken Trust, which also funds the Nonfiction prize (the Fiction prize is anonymously endowed).