The 2026 Nobel Prize announcements, in Stockholm, in a Swedish Academy, will on Thursday, announce the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature at 1:00 p.m. CEST – 12:00 noon in Nigeria.
Since the Nobel Prize in Literature was first awarded in 1901, it has become one of the world’s most prestigious honours for literary achievement. In the will of Alfred Nobel, the prizes are intended for those who “during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,” while the Literature Prize is designated for the person who “shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”
Since its creation, Africa has had five writers receive this extraordinary recognition.
As another Nobel season approaches, here are the five African writers who have entered the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the official reasons given by the Swedish Academy for their recognition.
- Wole Soyinka – Nigeria: Nobel Prize in Literature, 1986
The first African writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The judges gave this comment, “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence”
- Naguib Mahfouz – Egypt: Nobel Prize in Literature, 1988
The first Arabic-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The judges said, “who, through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind”.
- Nadine Gordimer – South Africa: Nobel Prize in Literature, 1991
The first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The judges said, “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity.”
- J. M. Coetzee – South Africa: Nobel Prize in Literature, 2003
Judges said, “who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider.”
- Abdulrazak Gurnah – Tanzania/Zanziba: Nobel Prize in Literature, 2021
The most recent African recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The judges said, “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
The World of Literature now awaits to see who will receive the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. Whether he will be from Africa or from elsewhere.
