Apollo Magazine has announced the shortlist for its 2026 Artist of the Year award, naming six artists whose work has shaped the past twelve months: Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Tracey Emin, Arthur Jafa, Kerry James Marshall and Rose Wylie. The award commends the most influential artists of the year, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on 19 November, supported by Bloomberg Connects, with the result published online and in the magazine's December issue.

Each of the six has had a defining year. Anderson won new admirers with a major retrospective at Tate Britain, where his paintings of identity, politics and the constructed environment drew on thirty years of work. Armitage filled the cavernous rooms of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice with bold, political paintings that outshone much of the work on show nearby during the Biennale. Emin's exhibition at Tate Modern, designed to affirm her claim to a lasting legacy, drew queues around the block.

Arthur Jafa's film Love is the Message, the Message is Death, first streamed on museum websites at the start of the current US president's first term, found a new audience, while his exhibition I Am Tony at the New Museum in New York, which opened in September, positioned him as a historian holding the record of the United States to account. Kerry James Marshall's exhibition The Histories at the Royal Academy, now on show in Paris, has been praised for paintings that handle questions of identity with bravura technique. Rose Wylie, at 91, filled the Royal Academy with a lifetime of bold, childlike painting that does not shy away from life's horrors.

The Apollo Awards also cover Museum Opening of the Year, Exhibition of the Year, Book of the Year, Acquisition of the Year and Digital Innovation of the Year, with all winners announced on the same night.