Art world report·London
£100K Fund Doubles for Manchester, £30K for Akinfe: Frieze London's Full 2026 Prize Winners
Frieze published its official tally of every prize and acquisition fund awarded at Frieze London 2026, covering ten schemes that moved works by more than twenty artists into UK public collections, from the Tate Fund to a new £30,000 Focus prize.
As Frieze London 2026 drew to a close in Regent's Park, the fair's organizer released the definitive list of this year's prize and acquisition winners — ten funds and awards that placed works by more than twenty artists into British public collections.
The headline institutional purchases came through the Frieze Tate Fund, which acquired an abstraction by Michaela Yearwood-Dan from Hauser & Wirth and a sculptural work by Luis Fernando Zapata. Since the fair's first edition in 2003, the fund has bought more than 170 works by over 100 artists for Tate's national collection.
Two schemes made their debut. The Women's Art Collection and Female Artists of the Mougins Museum fund bought works by Atong Atem, Moumita Basak and IyunOla Sanyaolu, backing women artists absent from UK public collections as part of the collection's 40th anniversary. The inaugural Dasha Shenkman Focus Fund spent £30,000 on three works by Okiki Akinfe, including the figurative painting Fame is a Gun, bound for Abbot Hall in Kendal.
Established acquisition funds kept pace. The Contemporary Art Society Collections Fund, in its tenth year, bought works by Karimah Ashadu, Gala Porras-Kim and Claudia Alarcón & Silät for the Whitworth in Manchester. The Arts Council Collection Fund more than doubled to £100,000 since its 2023 launch, acquiring Armando D. Cosmos, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Oliver Osborne and Laurie Smith. Spirit Now London placed works by Annette Messager and Stanislava Pinchuk with the V&A's photography department, and the fourth Fluxus-CPGA Prize split £15,000 between Myriam Mihindou and her gallery Phillida Reid.
Among individual artist prizes, Unathi Mkonto — shown by Goodman Gallery in the fair's Artist-to-Artist section — took the £10,000 Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize, to be shared with the Yinka Shonibare Foundation ahead of a 2027 commission. Ella Fleck won the Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Award and a 2027 solo show, while the £5,000 Frieze Stand Prize went to Valentine for its solo presentation of the late Indonesian artist Oototol.
