The shortlisted works across all 13 categories of the British Fantasy Awards have been announced! Find out who’s in the mix over on our blog. Winners announced at Fantasycon in October.
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Announcement:
The British Fantasy Awards 2026 Shortlists!
The votes have been tallied, the juries have confirmed the nominees, the administrators have checked and double checked and then checked again… It’s officially go-time, good people of speculative fiction.
First came the suggestions. Then the public voting. And then the vote auditing and jury confirmations. And now—yes, NOW we’re ready to announce the nominees for this year’s British Fantasy Awards!
The longest-running fantasy awards in the UK, the British Fantasy Awards are handed out every year to celebrate the best in speculative fiction from the preceding calendar year, which means 2025 releases were eligible for these awards. There’s 13 categories in total, covering everything from novels to artwork to audio. In fact, this year the audio category was split in two, helping the audio fiction releases to not have to compete with all those popular podcasts.
Says Awards Administrator Paul Yates: “The 2026 awards final short lists have taken a little longer than hoped, for good reasons! This year we have an additional category and saw 25% more votes cast than last year. We’ve also seen an increase in people wanting to be jurors, especially from BFS members, which is great to see.”
Says BFS Chair Shona Kinsella: “With so many exciting releases in 2025, our voters had a lot to choose from! Thank you to everyone who took the time to take part in the process in any way from adding to the suggestions list right through to volunteering as a juror. And thank you to our Awards Administrator Paul Yates, who takes on the mammoth task of making everything work. Congratulations to everyone whose work made it onto the shortlists and the best of luck to the jurors in the challenging task of selecting the winners.”
For more information on the process behind the BFAs, head over to our dedicated info page, or go more in-depth with the FAQs.
But now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…
Below are the nominees for this year’s British Fantasy Awards.
Best Anthology
- Lesbians In Space: Where No Man Has Gone Before, edited by J S Fields, William C Tracy, Heather Tracy (Space Wizard Science Fantasy)
- Blood in the Bricks, edited by Neil Williamson, NewCon Press
- This Way Lies Madness, edited Dave Jeffery, Lee Murray, Flame Tree Press
- Silk and Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora, Kristy Park Kulski (Bad Hand Books)
Best Artist
- Jenni Coutts
- Mina Ikemoto Ghosh
- Vincent Chong
- Ben Baldwin
- Kelly Chong
Best Audio (Fiction)
- The Shape of Monsters, CL Hellisen, Omari Douglas (Audible Originals)
- The Tiny Bookcase
- Podcastle
- Pseudopod
Best Audio (Non-Fiction)
- Breaking The Glass Slipper
- Fantasy Book Swap
- Uncanny
- The Folklore Podcast
Best Collection
- Dark Crescent, Lyndsey Croal (Luna Press)
- Call And Response, Christopher Caldwell (Neon Hemlock Press)
- Wolf’s Path, Joyce Chng (Atthis Arts)
- Who Will You Save, Gareth Powell (Titan Books)
- Into Wrack and Ruin, Benjamin Kurt Unsworth (Phantasmagoria Books)
Best Fantasy Novel (The Robert Holdstock Award)
- Daughters of Nicnevin, Shona Kinsella (Flame Tree Press)
- Magic, Maps, and Mischief, David Green (Independently Published)
- A Song of Legends Lost, M H Ayinde (Orbit)
- The Outcast Mage, Annabel Campbell (Orbit)
- Grave Empire, Richard Swan (Orbit)
- Upon a Starlit Tide, Kell Woods (Titan Books)
Best Horror Novel (The August Derleth Award)
- Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix (Tor Nightfire)
- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Titan Books)
- Hungerstone, Kat Dunn (Manilla Press)
- The Needfire, MK Hardy (Solaris)
- Lionhearts, Dan Howarth (Northern Republic Press)
- Black Flame, Gretchen Felker-Martin (Titan Books)
Best Independent Press
- Flame Tree Press
- Luna Press
- Black Shuck Books
- Newcon Press
Best Magazine/Periodical
- Ginger Nuts of Horror
- Remains
- Phantasmagoria
- Strange Horizons
- Mythaxis Magazine
Best Newcomer
- M H Ayinde, A Song of Legends Lost (Orbit)
- Annabel Campbell, The Outcast Mage (Orbit)
- Ana Sun, Futures to Live By (NewCon Press)
- M K Hardy, The Needfire (Solaris)
Best Non-Fiction
- Writing The Magic: Essays on Crafting Fantasy Fiction, Dan Coxon & Richard V Hirst (Dead Ink Books)
- Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity: Finding the Self in Other, Eugen Bacon (Strange Horizons)
- Nigerian Speculative Fiction: Evolution, Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke (Routledge India)
- The Full Lid, Alasdair Stuart, edited by Marguerite Kenner
- Britain’s Folklore Year: A seasonal journey through our customs, celebrations and rituals, Mark Norman (National Trust Books)
- The Ecological Imaginary in Literature and Other Media: The Nature of Fantasy, Kevan Manwaring (Routledge)
Best Novella
- The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Arcadia)
- Walking A Wounded Land, Andrew Knighton (Wizard’s Tower Press)
- Fate’s Bane, C.L. Clark (TorDotCom)
- The Nga’phandileh Whisperer: A Sauútiverse Novella, Eugen Bacon (Stars and Sabres Publishing)
Best Short Story
- Godzilla As A Young Man Named Mike, E M Faulds (Podcastle)
- Shadow Jack, CL Hellisen (Giganotosaurus)
- No One Knows the Old Ways Anymore and It Will Be The End of Everything, LJ McMenemy (Hiding Under the Leaves anthology, The Slab Press)
- Down Street, James Bennett (Blood in the Bricks anthology, NewCon Press)
The British Fantasy Awards will be presented as part of this year’s Fantasycon, to be held in Glasgow from 9-11 October. Get all the details (including your tickets!) over here.
One response to “The British Fantasy Awards 2026 Shortlists!”
Just heartfelt and profoundest thanks to the British Fantasy Society, year after year, for tagging the Best Novel Award ‘The Robert Holdstock Award’. I was Rob’s partner for about 30 years and I know he would have been thrilled beyond words that his name is associated with this award. I try to keep an eye on the winner each year so that I can send them one of Rob’s books as a tiny appreciation of this. Thank you, thank you again. Best wishes, Sarah (Sorry, his website isn’t up to date but please follow ‘Robert Holdstoc’k and ‘Mythago Wood – Make A Movie of Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood’ on Facebook!