2026 Berlin Art Prize goes to Meredith Monk
Akademie der Künste awards Berlin Art Prize – Jubilee Endowment 1848/1948 on 18 March 2026
This year’s Großer Kunstpreis Berlin (Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize), which is rotated among the six sections of the Akademie der Künste and is endowed with 15,000 euros, will be awarded in the category of music to the outstanding American composer and singer Meredith Monk (born in 1942 in New York). The prize will be presented on Wednesday, 18 March 2026, at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz.
The jury consisted of the composers Carola Bauckholt and Iris ter Schiphorst (directors of the Music Section of the Akademie der Künste) and Christine Fischer, director of the Stuttgart institution Musik der Jahrhunderte.
With Meredith Monk, the award honours an artist whose unique and influential 60-year body of work is marked by a distinctive interweaving of disciplines and perceptual approaches, combined with a generous and powerful creative force. As a world-renowned composer, singer, director/choreographer and filmmaker, Meredith Monk has created new operas, music theatre, films and installations that centre on an interdisciplinary approach to performance. From early on, this way of working opened up new perspectives in composition and notation, shaping generations of musicians. Her work Quarry: an opera in three movements (1976) was groundbreaking, and subsequently led to numerous major productions in Europe, the founding of ensembles and outreach work. Most recently, in 2023, she composed and directed Indra’s Net, the third part of a trilogy exploring our relationship with nature, which follows the highly acclaimed first two parts On Behalf of Nature (2013) and Cellular Songs (2018).
In addition to the Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize, the six Berlin Art Prizes in the Akademie’s respective artistic sections will also be awarded on 18 March. The prizes go to the Ukrainian-born artist Daria Chernyshova (Visual Arts Section), the Palestinian architects Elias and Yousef Anastas from Bethlehem and Paris (Architecture Section), the Swedish singer (soprano), composer and vocalist Sofia Jernberg (Music Section), the German writer Jayne-Ann Igel (Literature Section), the Austrian artist Matthias Jakisic (Performing Arts Section) and the independent arthouse cinema FSK Kino Berlin (Film and Media Arts Section). The prizes are endowed with 5,000 euros each.
The Berlin Art Prize – Jubilee Endowment 1848/1948 was established by the Berlin Senate in 1948 to commemorate the March Revolution of 1848. It has been awarded by the Akademie der Künste on behalf of the State of Berlin since 1971. The prize is intended to showcase the special role of the arts in a free society.
Grand Art Prize recipients of recent years have included Gilles Clément (2025), Simone Fattal (2024) and Joachim Trier (2023).
Event Announcement
On Saturday, 21 March 2026, the work of the prize recipient Meredith Monk will be celebrated with three events as part of the opening weekend of MaerzMusik – the festival for contemporary music of the Berliner Festspiele: In a concert on the main stage at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Meredith Monk, together with Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin, will present works from her artistic career spanning over six decades. The concert will be accompanied by two film screenings: Monk in Pieces (documentary film, 2025) and Book of Days (director: Meredith Monk, 1988).
All documents are protected by copyright. The reprinting of texts and the copying of all other files is only permitted with the express permission of the Akademie der Künste or the authors themselves.