Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026: the four nominees and the €90,000 prize

Key takeaways

• The winner of the 2026 Prix Marcel Duchamp, France's best-known award for contemporary art, is due to be named on Thursday, 22 October 2026, during Paris art week at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (MAM).
• Four nominees are in contention: Joël Andrianomearisoa, the duo Brognon Rollin (David Brognon and Stéphanie Rollin), Laura Henno and Josèfa Ntjam.
• The prize is worth €90,000 in total, of which €35,000 goes directly to the winning artist, according to the organisers.
• A ten-member international jury chaired by Xavier Rey, director of the Musée national d'art moderne at the Centre Pompidou, will choose the laureate.
• The nominees' exhibition is free and runs at the MAM from 2 October 2026 to 7 February 2027.

A prize decided in the middle of Paris art week

The Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026, France's best-known award for contemporary art, is due to be decided on Thursday, 22 October, at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. Four nominees are in contention: Joël Andrianomearisoa, Brognon Rollin, Laura Henno and Josèfa Ntjam.

The prize was created in 2000 by the ADIAF, the Association pour la diffusion internationale de l'art français, a group of private collectors, and is run in partnership with the Centre Pompidou. The ADIAF describes 2026 as the prize's 26th edition. It is aimed at artists who are French or who live and work in France, and over the years it has become a strong signal of institutional recognition for mid-career artists.

The exhibition moved from the Centre Pompidou to the MAM in 2025 because the Pompidou's historic building in the Beaubourg district has closed for a long renovation. According to the MAM's press release, the museum will host the Prix Marcel Duchamp exhibitions until 2029.

The four nominees

The nominees were chosen on 8 January 2026 by an ADIAF selection committee made up of collectors from the association. The table below sets out the basic facts published by the organisers.

Sources: ADIAF nominee announcement; Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris press release of 30 June 2026.

Joël Andrianomearisoa

Born in Antananarivo, the Madagascar capital, Andrianomearisoa works across sculpture, installation, textile and architecture. The ADIAF describes his work as building abstract narratives rather than literal ones, often around the physical presence of emotions. According to the ADIAF, both his Malagasy roots and his travels around the world inform the work, which deals in atmosphere and feeling more than in direct storytelling.

Brognon Rollin

David Brognon and Stéphanie Rollin, born in Belgium and Luxembourg respectively, work as a duo, which is why some coverage notes that the shortlist technically names five people. Their installations, sculptures, videos, performances and photographs focus on people living at the margins of society, especially those who are confined or kept out of sight. According to the ADIAF, the duo builds each project through research, time spent in the field and collaboration with the people concerned.

Laura Henno

Henno is a photographer and filmmaker whose work the ADIAF describes as politically engaged. She has spent long periods with communities shaped by migration and life on the margins, including in the Comoros and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean and in a settlement in the California desert. Of the four nominees, she is the one most closely associated with the camera, working with both still and moving images.

Josèfa Ntjam

The youngest of the nominees, born in 1992, Ntjam is an artist, performer and writer. She combines sculpture, photomontage, film and sound, drawing on images and texts gathered from the internet, science books and archives. The ADIAF says she uses this material to question dominant stories about origins and identity, mixing it with references to African mythology and science fiction.

What is on show at the Musée d'Art Moderne

Unlike previous editions held in a single temporary gallery at the Centre Pompidou, the four nominees present their work within the MAM's own collection displays. The museum describes the arrangement as a "constellation" of presentations spread through the building in the Palais de Tokyo on avenue du Président Wilson. Entry is free, in line with access to the MAM's permanent collection.

The exhibition is curated by Odile Burluraux, chief curator at the MAM, and Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, curator at the Centre Pompidou's Musée national d'art moderne. It opened on 2 October and, according to the MAM, runs until 7 February 2027; some listings give a closing date of 14 February 2027, so visitors may want to check the museum's website before planning a visit. The official documents reviewed for this article do not give a full list of individual works.

How the jury chooses the winner

The prize works in two stages. First, the ADIAF selection committee picks four nominees in January. Then, in October, an international jury meets during Paris art week to name the laureate, with the announcement made at the MAM. For 2026, the ADIAF lists the jury as follows: Xavier Rey (president), Claude Bonnin, Akemi Shiraha, Fabrice Hergott (director of the MAM), Fernando Arriola, Kader Attia, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Karin Hindsbo, Christophe Leribault and Marie-Cécile Zinsou. The organisers say the jury brings together heads of art institutions, collectors and two artists. Kader Attia, one of the jurors, won the prize himself in 2016.

In past editions, each nominee has been introduced to the jury by a "rapporteur", usually a curator or critic who presents the artist's work before the deliberation. At the 2025 edition, for example, the ADIAF's laureate announcement named a separate rapporteur for each of the four finalists. The rapporteurs for 2026 had not been published in the sources reviewed for this article. The jury's deliberations are private, and the organisers do not publish vote counts.

Recent winners

Sources: ADIAF list of editions; ADIAF announcement of the 2025 laureate.

Last year the jury met on 23 October 2025 and chose the Paris-based painter Xie Lei from a shortlist that also included Bianca Bondi, Eva Nielsen and Lionel Sabatté. Earlier laureates include Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tatiana Trouvé, Cyprien Gaillard, Latifa Echakhch and Kader Attia.

Key dates for the 2026 edition

French pop culture is also being reworked as collectible design: the LEGO Group has announced an official partnership with Daft Punk, whose first set recreates the Alive 2007 pyramid stage from a 2020 fan design; see our report on the LEGO Daft Punk set.

What it means

For the artists, the prize matters well beyond the €35,000 award. Winning brings visibility with museums and collectors at the exact moment when much of the international art world is gathered in Paris. Even nomination carries weight: the ADIAF says it has organised around 50 exhibitions in France featuring nominees and laureates, as well as shows abroad with support from the Institut français.

This year's shortlist also reflects themes that have run through recent French art: migration and life on the margins (Henno and Brognon Rollin), histories and identities shaped beyond mainland France (Andrianomearisoa and Ntjam), and practices that mix many media rather than sticking to a single discipline. Whichever artist the jury picks on 22 October, the four presentations remain on view at the MAM into early 2027. Until the announcement is made, no outcome is known, and there is no official favourite.

Related coverage

• Anne Carson, 2026 Nobel Literature Laureate: Where to Start Reading
• Booker Prize 2026 shortlist: six novels and how the winner is picked
• U2 Latin America tour 2027: dates, tickets and the new album

Sources

• ADIAF: Artistes nommés pour le Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026
• Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris: Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026 press release (30 June 2026)
• Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris: Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026 exhibition page
• ADIAF: The editions of the Prix Marcel Duchamp
• ADIAF: Announcement of the 2025 Prix Marcel Duchamp laureate
• ArtReview: Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026 shortlist announced
• Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp Prize (list of laureates)