The ten poets shortlisted for Britain’s most valuable poetry prize read from their collections at the Royal Festival Hall, the night before the winner is named.
The ten poets shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize read from their collections at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 17 January 2027, the eve of the award ceremony. Ian McMillan introduces them as master of ceremonies.
The prize was inaugurated in 1993 to mark the Poetry Book Society’s 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet. Eliot’s estate has funded it from the start.
It goes each year to the best new collection published in the UK and Ireland. Winners include Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Ocean Vuong. The winner receives £25,000, the largest sum in British poetry.
This year’s judges, Leontia Flynn in the chair with Ishion Hutchinson and Daisy Lafarge, chose ten collections from 174. The readings are the largest annual poetry event in Britain, and the winner of the 2026 prize is named the following night, Monday 18 January.
The list sets a former Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, beside the American Jorie Graham, Shara McCallum from Jamaica, Kim Moore and the London-born Imani Mason Jordan. Keith Jarrett, Sylvia Legris, Holly Pester, Jana Prikryl and Billy Ramsell complete it.