Basel-based artist and filmmaker Basim Magdy (b. 1977) has been named the recipient of the 2026 Helmut-Kraft Art Prize, awarded by the Helmut-Kraft-Stiftung together with the Museum für Neue Kunst in Freiburg im Breisgau. The annual prize honours contemporary artists whose work demonstrates outstanding artistic independence, high quality and a promising vision for the future, and it is among the more distinctive awards in the German art landscape for the way it binds recognition directly to museum collecting. Magdy joins a distinguished roster of past laureates that includes Hans Haacke, Rosemarie Trockel, Anselm Kiefer, Imi Knoebel, Karin Sander, Havîn Al-Sîndy, Gerold Miller, Nicole Wermers and Peter Stauss. The foundation's board praised his multidisciplinary oeuvre and its distinctive visual language, which has captivated audiences over many years across film, installation and works on paper. The prize is structured unusually: rather than a cash award alone, it takes the form of a targeted purchase of a major work that is then donated as a permanent gift to a public museum, ensuring the laureate's long-term institutional presence. For 2026, the prize funds the acquisition of Magdy's interactive installation 'PINGPINPOOLPONG, or How I Learned to Laugh at Failure'. Currently on view in the special exhibition 'SPIELFELD. Sport & Kunst', the large-scale work will officially enter the collection of the Museum für Neue Kunst once the show closes. The acquisition expands the Freiburg museum's holdings with a work that directly engages the public through interactivity. Magdy, known for films and installations that blend science fiction imagery with wry reflections on failed utopias and speculative futures, has in recent years built an international profile through exhibitions across Europe and beyond, making the prize a timely institutional endorsement of his trajectory.