On 11 June 2026, at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Alice Jolly was named the winner of the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Matchbox Girl, a novel narrated by a silent girl who becomes a patient of Dr Hans Asperger in 1930s Vienna. She beat a shortlist of five and a longlist of twelve, chosen from novels published in 2025.
The Walter Scott Prize is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes, and it is given only to historical fiction, so its lists are some of the best reading guides the genre gets each year. Below you will find the winner, the full shortlist and the rest of the longlist, with what each book is about, where and when it is set, and which one to pick up first.
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The 2026 Prize at a Glance
| Fact | Details |
|---|---|
| Winner | The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly |
| Prize money | £25,000 for the winner, £1,500 for each shortlisted author |
| Longlist announced | 5 February 2026 (12 books) |
| Shortlist announced | 16 April 2026 (5 books) |
| Winner announced | 11 June 2026 at the Borders Book Festival, Melrose (made public on 12 June) |
| Chair of judges | Katie Grant |
| Eligible books | Novels written in English, published in 2025 in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth, set mostly at least 60 years ago |
What Is the Walter Scott Prize?
The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was founded by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose family has close ties to Sir Walter Scott, the writer usually credited with inventing the historical novel when he published Waverley in 1814. It was first awarded in 2010, to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall, and it is now run by the Abbotsford Trust, the charity that looks after Scott’s home in the Scottish Borders.
The prize has one rule that defines it. Borrowing the subtitle of Waverley, “‘Tis Sixty Years Since”, most of a novel’s story must be set at least 60 years before publication. That is why a book set in the winter of 1962 to 1963 could win in 2025, and why the 2026 lists stretch from the Neolithic to the 1950s.
The judges look for originality, innovation, ambition, durability and quality of writing. In 2026 the panel was writer Katie Grant (chair), art historian James Holloway, children’s author Elizabeth Laird, broadcaster James Naughtie, bookseller Rosamund de la Hey and Rosi Byard-Jones, a former winner of the Young Walter Scott Prize. You can read the judges’ own citations on the official Walter Scott Prize website.
If you are new to the genre, our guide What Is Historical Fiction? explains how the category is defined, and the 60 year rule is one of the clearest answers you will find.
The 2026 Winner
The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (2025)
Setting: Vienna, 1930s, as Austria falls under Nazi rule
Adelheid Brunner does not speak. She writes, she draws, she keeps careful notes on everything around her, and her great ambition is to own one thousand matchboxes. Her grandmother has no idea what to do with her, so Adelheid is taken to the children’s clinic at the Vienna Children’s Hospital, run by a doctor who lets the children play all day and seems to understand her: Dr Hans Asperger.
When the Nazis march into Vienna in 1938, the clinic becomes a far more dangerous place. Children start to disappear, and Adelheid begins to suspect that the doctor’s games are played for the highest stakes. To survive, she has to play a game whose rules she cannot yet see.
The judges called it “a gripping tour de force” and said it “may be the most unusual book you read this year”. What makes it stand out is the voice: a narrator who cannot speak but tells her story with startling energy, and a novel that looks hard at Asperger’s real legacy and at the children who were lost under Nazi rule. It was the first time Jolly, a playwright, novelist and memoirist, had been considered for the prize. Some of her earlier novels were published through crowdfunding, which makes the win all the more striking.
Read it if: you want a Second World War novel that comes at the period from an angle you have not seen before. For more fiction set in these years, see our WWII time period hub.
The 2026 Shortlist
The other four shortlisted novels each won their authors £1,500. All five shortlisted writers are British, and between them the books run from the 1480s to the 1950s.
The Pretender by Jo Harkin (2025)
Setting: England, Burgundy and Ireland, from 1483
Twelve year old John Collan lives quietly on a farm with his widowed father, as far from the royal court as anyone can be. Then two well dressed strangers arrive, and John is taken from his family and moved from Oxford to Burgundy to Ireland, being trained the whole way for a new identity: Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, the rightful heir to the throne of England.
Harkin takes the real story of the pretender Lambert Simnel and runs with it. The judges called it “a rich, brilliant, fresh, bawdy novel” that is “both convincing and very very funny”, which is not something often said about the Wars of the Roses.
Read it if: you love the Plantagenets and want something with a sense of humour. Our Plantagenet and Tudor series reading order and Wars of the Roses series reading order cover the same years from the royal side.
Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet (2025)
Setting: Benbecula, Outer Hebrides, 1857
On 9 July 1857, on the remote Scottish island of Benbecula, a labourer named Angus MacPhee killed his father, mother and aunt. He was found criminally insane and spent the rest of his life in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. Burnet tells the true story through the eyes of Angus’s older brother, Malcolm, who is shunned by the island and haunted by what happened.
Burnet already has form with this kind of book: his earlier novel about a triple murder in a Highland community was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016. Benbecula is short, dark and claustrophobic. The judges compared it to James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson, and said it “is as far removed from the recent cosy-crime tradition as it is possible to be”.
Read it if: you like historical crime with real menace. Our Best Historical Mystery Fiction list has more, and the Victorian Era hub covers the wider period.
Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert (2025)
Setting: Northern Germany, 1945
The Third Reich has collapsed. Ruth Novak, a 32 year old Red Cross volunteer from England, arrives at a German factory that kept Hitler’s war machine running on the forced labour of Poles and Ukrainians. The guards have fled, the paperwork has been burned, and hundreds of hungry men are stranded inside. But where are the women? In the nearby town, a boy called Benno has seen things he barely understands, and the townspeople are closing ranks.
Seiffert’s first novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001. The judges praised the way this one looks at a story fiction rarely tells, the millions of forced labourers brought into Germany, and called it “full of feeling but without sentimentality”.
Read it if: you want to know what happened after the war ended. Our Best WWII Historical Fiction list has more novels from these years.
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (2025)
Setting: Longferry, a fictional town on England’s north west coast, 1950s
Thomas Flett lives with his mother in Longferry and works his grandfather’s trade as a shanker, taking a horse and cart onto the grey beach before dawn to scrape for shrimp. In private he is a folk musician, practising songs on a guitar and pining for a local girl. Then a striking American visitor arrives, talking of Hollywood, and Thomas has to decide whether this stranger is his way out.
Seascraper was also shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. It is a small story told with great care, and the judges said “when you come to the end you’ll want to start again”.
Read it if: you like quiet, atmospheric novels about ordinary working lives.
The Rest of the 2026 Longlist
Seven more novels made the longlist of twelve, announced on 5 February 2026. They take in Venice, Glasgow, Cumbria, the Canadian wilderness, Latin America, Brisbane and Provence, and several are by authors who have already won or been shortlisted for major prizes.
Venetian Vespers by John Banville (2025)
Setting: Venice, around the turn of the twentieth century
English journalist Evelyn Dolman marries an American heiress, Laura Rensselaer, and their delayed honeymoon in Venice turns sinister when they take up residence in the brooding Palazzo Dioscuri, a stone’s throw from St Mark’s. Evelyn narrates, and from the first pages he warns the reader to expect something disquieting in the winter chill of the city. Banville won the Booker Prize in 2005 and also writes crime fiction under the name Benjamin Black, so a gothic Venice is right in his territory.
The Two Roberts by Damian Barr (2025)
Setting: Glasgow and wartime Europe, from 1933
On his first day at Glasgow School of Art in 1933, Robert MacBryde meets Robert Colquhoun, and the two never leave each other’s side. Barr, a Scottish writer and broadcaster, tells the real story of the two painters, their art, their class and the love they had to hide behind closed doors, as their talent carries them across a Europe heading for war.
Eden’s Shore by Oisín Fagan (2025)
Setting: the Atlantic and a Spanish colony in Latin America, late eighteenth century
Irishman Angel Kelly sails from Liverpool aboard the Atlas, planning to found a utopian commune in Brazil. A mutiny leaves him stranded on the coast of an unnamed Spanish colony, and he is drawn into rebellion and a chase between empires, among revolutionaries, pirates, aristocrats, soldiers and spies. It is a big, swashbuckling tale of greed, revenge and love.
Helm by Sarah Hall (2025)
Setting: the Eden Valley, Cumbria, from the Neolithic to the present
Helm is the only named wind in the British Isles, and in Sarah Hall’s novel it is the main character. The book moves through the people who have lived with it over the centuries: a Neolithic tribe trying to placate it, a Dark Age wizard priest trying to banish it, a Victorian engineer trying to capture it, and, in the present, a scientist alone in her observation hut. Hall was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, and this is one of the most ambitious books on the list.
Boundary Waters by Tristan Hughes (2025)
Setting: Lower Canada and the upper Great Lakes, early nineteenth century
Arthur Stanton is a young man with no direction and a father he cannot please. Inspired by travellers’ tales, he joins the fur trade and sets off north with a ragtag band of voyageurs. The result is a tragicomic story of fortune seeking, ill-starred love and redemption, in a land where a misunderstanding can be fatal.
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (2023)
Setting: Brisbane, 1854 and the present day
In 1854, Mulanyin meets Nita in Brisbane, briefly known as Edenglassie, where his people still outnumber the British settlers. When colonial violence breaks the fragile peace, his love for her collides with his loyalty to his homeland. In the present day, activist Winona’s grandmother Eddie becomes a local celebrity as “Queensland’s Oldest Aboriginal”, and past and present collide. First published in Australia in 2023, it reached the longlist with its UK edition. It had already won the ARA Historical Novel Prize in 2024, and Lucashenko won the Miles Franklin Award in 2019.
The Artist by Lucy Steeds (2025)
Setting: Provence, summer 1920
Ettie moves silently through her uncle’s remote farmhouse, making his genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, arrives believing that an interview with the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe will make his name. But everyone in the house has secrets, and Ettie, who has kept hers for years, is ready to be seen, even if it means setting fire to her whole world in the heat of that summer.
The Full 2026 Longlist
| Book | Author | Setting | Stage reached |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Matchbox Girl | Alice Jolly | Vienna, 1930s | Winner |
| The Pretender | Jo Harkin | England, Burgundy and Ireland, 1480s | Shortlist |
| Benbecula | Graeme Macrae Burnet | Outer Hebrides, 1857 | Shortlist |
| Once the Deed Is Done | Rachel Seiffert | Northern Germany, 1945 | Shortlist |
| Seascraper | Benjamin Wood | North west England, 1950s | Shortlist |
| Venetian Vespers | John Banville | Venice, turn of the twentieth century | Longlist |
| The Two Roberts | Damian Barr | Glasgow and Europe, from 1933 | Longlist |
| Eden’s Shore | Oisín Fagan | Latin America, late eighteenth century | Longlist |
| Helm | Sarah Hall | Cumbria, Neolithic to present | Longlist |
| Boundary Waters | Tristan Hughes | Lower Canada, early nineteenth century | Longlist |
| Edenglassie | Melissa Lucashenko | Brisbane, 1854 and present | Longlist |
| The Artist | Lucy Steeds | Provence, 1920 | Longlist |
Which 2026 Book Should You Read First?
- For the book everyone is talking about: The Matchbox Girl, the winner.
- For Tudor and Plantagenet fans: The Pretender, a funny take on the Wars of the Roses. Our Best Tudor Historical Fiction list picks up where it ends.
- For a short, dark read: Benbecula, a short novel based on a true crime.
- For Second World War fiction: Once the Deed Is Done, set in the weeks after the war.
- For a quiet, beautiful novel: Seascraper.
- For something gothic: Venetian Vespers.
- For Scottish history: Benbecula and The Two Roberts. Our upcoming Best Scottish Historical Fiction list will have more.
- For an epic adventure: Eden’s Shore or Boundary Waters.
- For a novel that spans centuries: Helm or Edenglassie.
- For a woman stepping out of a man’s shadow: The Artist. See also our Best Female Lead Historical Fiction list.
Last Year’s Winner and the Road to 2027
The 2025 prize went to Andrew Miller for The Land in Winter, set in a remote English community during the brutal winter of 1962 to 1963. It only just met the 60 year rule. Miller had been shortlisted twice before, and the judges called him “a true master craftsman”.
Hilary Mantel, the very first winner, remains the prize’s best known name. If you want to start with the book that launched the award, our Wolf Hall Trilogy reading order and Hilary Mantel author page are the place to begin.
The 2027 prize will be awarded in June 2027 at the Borders Book Festival, with broadcaster Martha Kearney joining the judging panel. The longlist usually appears in February and the shortlist in April, and we will cover each year’s winners as they are announced.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won the Walter Scott Prize in 2026?
Alice Jolly won the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Matchbox Girl. The prize was presented on 11 June 2026 at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland.
What is The Matchbox Girl about?
The Matchbox Girl follows Adelheid Brunner, a girl in 1930s Vienna who does not speak and dreams of owning a thousand matchboxes. She becomes a patient of Dr Hans Asperger at the Vienna Children’s Hospital, and when the Nazis take over the city in 1938 she begins to suspect that the children who disappear from the clinic are in terrible danger.
Which books were on the 2026 Walter Scott Prize shortlist?
The five shortlisted books were The Pretender by Jo Harkin, The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly, Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet, Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert and Seascraper by Benjamin Wood.
How many books were on the 2026 longlist?
Twelve. Alongside the five shortlisted books, the longlist included Venetian Vespers by John Banville, The Two Roberts by Damian Barr, Eden’s Shore by Oisín Fagan, Helm by Sarah Hall, Boundary Waters by Tristan Hughes, Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko and The Artist by Lucy Steeds.
How much is the Walter Scott Prize worth?
The winner receives £25,000 and each shortlisted author receives £1,500, which makes it one of the most valuable fiction prizes in the UK.
Which books can win the Walter Scott Prize?
Novels written in English and first published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. Most of the story must be set at least 60 years before publication, a rule taken from the subtitle of Walter Scott’s novel Waverley.
Who judged the 2026 Walter Scott Prize?
The 2026 panel was chaired by writer Katie Grant, with James Holloway, Elizabeth Laird, James Naughtie, Rosamund de la Hey and Rosi Byard-Jones.
Who won the Walter Scott Prize in 2025?
Andrew Miller won in 2025 for The Land in Winter, a novel set during the hard English winter of 1962 to 1963.
Who was the first winner of the Walter Scott Prize?
Hilary Mantel won the first Walter Scott Prize in 2010 for Wolf Hall.
When will the 2027 Walter Scott Prize be announced?
The 2027 winner will be announced in June 2027 at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. Broadcaster Martha Kearney joins the judging panel for 2027.