Rene Matic, a 29-year-old London-based artist, writer and poet, has won the 2026 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, one of the most closely watched honours in European photography. The award carries a prize of £30,000 and recognises a project judged to have made the most significant contribution to international contemporary photography in Europe over the past year.

Matic was selected for a 2025 exhibition at Berlin's Center for Contemporary Arts, where the work under consideration was shown. The artist, who is represented by London gallery Arcadia Missa, builds photographs and writing around working-class British life, queer experience and West Indian heritage, treating community and belonging as both subject and method rather than as background detail.

The announcement was made at The Photographers' Gallery in London, which organises the prize. The gallery's director, who chaired the jury, praised the work for its directness and honesty, describing photographs that carry a present-day story of Britain to audiences beyond the artist's own circles, and noting how community ties can both heal and hold people together.

Matic responded to the win with surprise, saying the news had arrived as a shock before giving way to a rush of other feelings, including disbelief, excitement, gratitude and pride. Asked how the prize money would be used, the artist pointed to the everyday pressure of living costs, saying that easing that weight would make it possible to keep making work without compromise and to focus on living and loving. The win caps a fast rise for an artist whose practice moves between image-making, poetry and writing about the places and people that shaped them.