Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge wins 2026 Camões Prize for literature
The unanimous decision by the jury, announced on 2 July, awards the 80-year-old author the most important literary prize in the Portuguese-speaking world, along with a €100,000 purse.
The Announcement
The Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge has won the 2026 Camões Prize, the most prestigious literary award for Portuguese-language authors. The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport announced the decision on 2 July after a jury met online and voted unanimously. The prize, worth €100,000, is funded in equal parts by Portugal and Brazil. Jorge succeeds Angolan poet Ana Paula Tavares, the 2025 laureate. Minister Margarida Balseiro Lopes telephoned the author to inform her of the distinction.
The 2026 Camões Prize recognizes one of the most relevant voices in contemporary Portuguese literature. Over decades, Lídia Jorge built a work of enormous intellectual and literary rigor, contributing to affirming the Portuguese language as a space for creation, thought, and dialogue between cultures.
A Lifetime of Literary Achievement
Lídia Jorge, born in Boliqueime in 1946, debuted in 1980 with the novel O Dia dos Prodígios, a landmark of post-revolution Portuguese fiction. Her career spans more than four decades, including novels, short stories, children's literature, essays, plays, and poetry. The jury highlighted the "diversified body of her work" and its enrichment of the literary and civic-cultural heritage of the Portuguese language. Her writing, marked by a dense poetic prose, tackles the legacy of dictatorship, democratic transition, women's condition, emigration, generational tensions, and the role of collective memory.
- Born in Boliqueime, Portugal
- Publishes debut novel O Dia dos Prodígios
- Wins FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages
- Publishes Misericórdia, wins Prix Médicis Étranger
- Receives Pessoa Prize
- Awarded Medal of Cultural Merit by Portuguese government
- Wins 38th Camões Prize
Themes and International Reach
Jorge's 2022 novel Misericórdia earned the Prix Médicis Étranger in France and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. She also won the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages in 2020, the Grand Prize of the Portuguese Writers' Association in 2022, and the Pessoa Prize in 2025. Earlier this year, the Portuguese government honored her with the Medal of Cultural Merit. The Camões Prize, created in 1988, further cements her status as a central figure of Lusophone letters.
The jury decided unanimously to distinguish the writer Lídia Jorge, highlighting the diversified body of her work and her great contribution to the enrichment of the literary and civic-cultural heritage of the Portuguese language.
Jury and Process
The 38th edition of the prize was decided by a panel that met by videoconference. Portugal was represented by José Carlos Seabra Pereira (University of Coimbra) and Ana Mafalda Leite (University of Lisbon). Brazil fielded Lúcia Santaella and José Ribamar Bessa Freire. The Portuguese-speaking African countries were represented by Guinean writer Odete Semedo and Angolan critic Lopito Feijó. Their unanimous vote reflects broad consensus across the Lusophone world about Jorge's literary stature.
