The LOEWE FOUNDATION has announced the 30 finalists of the Craft Prize 2026, one of the most prestigious international awards dedicated to contemporary craftsmanship. The selected works will be exhibited at the National Gallery Singapore from May 13 to June 14, 2026, while the winner will be revealed on May 12, confirming the prize as a global platform that brings together cultures, materials, and artistic languages from around the world.
Now in its ninth edition, the competition continues to attract increasingly broad international participation, with entries from more than one hundred countries. The selection reflects a vision of craft as a constantly evolving discipline in which tradition is not an endpoint but fertile ground for innovation. The shortlisted works demonstrate a strong focus on the tension between balance and instability, precision and organic deformation, with regular surfaces interrupted by sudden shifts in colour and geometric structures that appear to bend or transform before the viewer’s eyes.
Materials range from ceramics and glass to wood, metal, textiles, paper, and lacquer, yet what unites the works above all is the importance of process. Techniques such as weaving, layering, bending, and fusing become narrative tools through which artists explore universal themes such as time, growth, memory, and transformation. Many projects reinterpret traditional practices — from textile making to bamboo craft, glazing to lacquerwork — relocating them in contemporary contexts through new technologies, collective collaborations, and experimentation on unprecedented scales.
The choice of Singapore as the exhibition venue reinforces the international scope of the prize and highlights the foundation’s commitment to supporting artists at pivotal moments in their careers. The initiative is also part of a broader programme promoting creativity, which in 2026 will include new artistic residencies in Mallorca designed to offer selected participants the opportunity to develop projects in direct dialogue with Spain’s cultural landscape.
With this edition, the Craft Prize reaffirms how contemporary craft has become one of the most dynamic territories in international artistic research — a field where technical mastery, experimentation, and conceptual vision merge to redefine the boundaries between art, design, and sculpture.
The selected finalists for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2026 are (in alphabetical order, with country or region):
Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón (Spain)
Jobe Burns (United Kingdom)
Soohyun Chou (Republic of Korea)
Morten Løbner Espersen (Denmark)
Liam Fleming (Australia)
Oskar Gustafsson (Sweden)
Susan Halls (United Kingdom)
Gjertrud Hals (Norway)
Chia-Chen Hsieh (Taiwan Region)
Adelene Koh (Singapore)
Maria Koshenkova (Denmark)
Jong In Lee (Republic of Korea)
Somyeong Lee (Republic of Korea)
Misako Nakahira (Japan)
Fadekemi Ogunsanya (Nigeria)
Jieun Park (Republic of Korea)
Jongjin Park (Republic of Korea)
Rafael Pérez Fernández (Spain)
Dorothea Prühl (Germany)
Kirstie Rea (Australia)
Vivi Rosa (Brazil)
Hervé Sabin (Haiti)
Xanthe Somers (Zimbabwe)
Coco Sung (Republic of Korea)
Nobuyuki Tanaka (Japan)
Graziano Visintin (Italy)
Rayah Wauters (Belgium)
Nan Wei (China)
Jane Yang-D’Haene (United States of America)
Ayano Yoshizumi (Japan
