The Swedish Academy will announce the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature on October 8 at 13:00 CEST, which is 4:30 pm IST. The announcement will be streamed live on the Nobel Prize's official digital channels.

There is no official shortlist. The Nobel Prize does not publish nominees, and their names stay secret for 50 years. Bookmakers' favourite is Chinese writer Can Xue at 10/1 with Ladbrokes, ahead of Haruki Murakami, Gerald Murnane and Thomas Pynchon.

The 2025 winner was Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai, known for his dense, dystopian prose. The 2026 winner will receive 12 million Swedish kronor, about 1.2 million dollars, a rise of one million for the prize's 125th anniversary.

This year's Nobel week began with the medicine prize on October 5, awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for optogenetics. The physics prize went to Francis Halzen for cosmic neutrinos, and chemistry to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, followed by the Economic Sciences prize on Monday. Predictions remain guesses until the Academy names the laureate.