Chanel NEXT Prize 2026: ten finalists redefining the future of culture

The Chanel NEXT Prize returns for its third edition, spotlighting ten international artists whose practices actively shape the future of culture. Presented by the Chanel Culture Fund, the biennial prize awards a total of €1 million in unrestricted funding and unfolds across an international programme connected to key cultural moments, including gatherings aligned with the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Chanel Culture Fund and the vision behind the prize

Launched in 2021, the Chanel NEXT Prize reflects the Chanel Culture Fund’s long-term commitment to contemporary creativity across disciplines. Rather than rewarding a single medium or outcome, the prize focuses on artists who are rethinking their fields and opening new cultural pathways. Each finalist receives €100,000 in unrestricted funding, alongside access to a two-year mentorship and networking programme developed with partner institutions such as London’s Royal College of Art.

Artists shaping the future of culture

This year’s finalists work across visual art, music, choreography, fashion and film, forming a deliberately interdisciplinary cohort.

Álvaro Urbano is a Spanish artist known for hyper-realistic botanical sculptures and immersive installations. Using plants as symbolic stand-ins, Urbano explores intimacy, memory and queer narratives within architectural spaces. Ayoung Kim works with video, sound and game-engine technologies. The Seoul-based artist creates speculative worlds that examine algorithms, virtual economies and the blurred boundaries between digital and physical life.

Pan Daijing, artist and composer, merges experimental music, architecture and cinema. Her large-scale installations transform exhibition spaces into sensory environments shaped by sound, movement and spatial tension. Emeka Ogboh’s multisensory practice draws from urban soundscapes and collective memory. Through field recordings and installations, he addresses questions of migration, globalization and shared cultural experience.

Pol Taburet is a French painter who creates enigmatic figures that exist at the intersection of mythology and contemporary culture. Combining classical painting techniques with airbrushing, his work reflects on identity, hybridity and the uncanny. Ambrose Akinmusire is a celebrated jazz musician and composer, who expands the language of contemporary music through improvisation, political reflection and cross-genre collaboration. Andrea Peña’s work focuses on the body as a site of transformation. Through movement and performance, Peña explores power structures, vulnerability and ritual.

Marco da Silva Ferreira’s drawing from club culture and traditional dance, Ferreira’s choreography blends precision with raw physicality, examining collective movement and social energy. Bárbara Sánchez-Kane operates between fashion and art; she uses garments, performance and sculpture to challenge conventions of gender, authority and desire. Her practice positions fashion as a critical cultural language. Payal Kapadia is a filmmaker known for poetic, politically charged cinema that blends documentary and fiction. Her work often reflects on memory, intimacy and life in contemporary India.

Beyond the Chanel NEXT Prize

Alongside the financial award, the finalists will come together through an international mentorship programme designed to foster dialogue across disciplines and geographies. Guided by a jury of curators, artists and cultural leaders, the Chanel NEXT Prize continues to position itself not just as an award, but as a long-term platform for artists defining what comes next.

By supporting creative freedom without imposed outcomes, the Chanel Culture Fund reinforces its belief that the future of culture is shaped by artists who are given the space to experiment, evolve and lead on their own terms.