Announced 8 October, 11:00 UTC

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Swedish Academy names the 2026 laureate at 13:00 Stockholm time on 8 October 2026. This page updates when it does. Until then: who the betting markets favour, and what the Academy's own record suggests.

The favourites

Odds are a measure of what gamblers believe, not of what the eighteen members of the Academy have been reading. They have been wrong far more often than right: the market has made Murakami a favourite for a decade and a half. Prices below from OLBG, reporting Ladbrokes, 2 September 2026.

Writer	Language	Odds
Can Xue Favourite this year and joint favourite last year, when Krasznahorkai won.	Chinese	10/1
Haruki Murakami Near the top of this market for more than a decade without winning.	Japanese	14/1
Cristina Rivera Garza	Spanish	16/1
Enrique Vila-Matas	Spanish	16/1
Gerald Murnane Priced much shorter by Bethard than by Ladbrokes.	English	16/1
Mircea Cărtărescu	Romanian	16/1
Thomas Pynchon The only name on this board already in the catalog.	English	16/1
Lyudmila Ulitskaya	Russian	18/1
Ersi Sotiropoulos Greek has not won since 1979.	Greek	20/1
Margaret Atwood	English	20/1
Michel Houellebecq	French	20/1

Can Xue 10/1

Chinese

Favourite this year and joint favourite last year, when Krasznahorkai won.
Haruki Murakami 14/1

Japanese

Near the top of this market for more than a decade without winning.
Cristina Rivera Garza 16/1

Spanish
Enrique Vila-Matas 16/1

Spanish
Gerald Murnane 16/1

English

Priced much shorter by Bethard than by Ladbrokes.
Mircea Cărtărescu 16/1

Romanian
Thomas Pynchon 16/1

English · The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow

The only name on this board already in the catalog.
Lyudmila Ulitskaya 18/1

Russian
Ersi Sotiropoulos 20/1

Greek

Greek has not won since 1979.
Margaret Atwood 20/1

English
Michel Houellebecq 20/1

French

Of these, only Thomas Pynchon is in the catalog, with The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow.

What the Academy has actually done

The catalog holds 128 laureates, from 1901 to 2025. Counted by the language a laureate wrote in, the prize's favourites are plain: English 31, French 16, German 15, Spanish 13, Swedish 7.

Longest waits among languages that have won at least twice: Danish last in 1944, 82 years ago; Greek last in 1979, 47 years ago; Japanese last in 1994, 32 years ago; Italian last in 1997, 29 years ago. The full chronological roster runs from 1901 to now.

The last six laureates

2025 László Krasznahorkai · Satantango
2024 Han Kang · The Vegetarian
2023 Jon Fosse · Septology
2022 Annie Ernaux · The Years
2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah · Paradise / Afterlives
2020 Louise Glück · Selected Poems (Glück)

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