Battle of the Bots: Which AI can Predict the Booker?

Yesterday our panel posted our 2026 Booker longlist predictions. Today it’s time for the AI predictions. You all saw how well Chat GPT did with its predictions. I asked several frequently-used AI to give us their predictions for this year’s booker longlist. The prompt was the same for all. The prompt I gave was: Can you please give me your predictions for the 13 books you think will make the 2026 Booker longlist. Please follow Booker Prize eligibility criteria. Books must be originally written in English, have a UK publisher, and be published between October 1, 2025 and September 20, 2026. Thanks to Gygoldenreviewer (if you’re not already following him on Instagram, you should rectify that asap) for pointing out that ChatGPT from yesterday’s post selected a book that does not have a UK publisher. As such, I modified the prompt slightly to try and direct them to be more accurate.

Responses were copied and pasted exactly as obtained. I did not correct any errors. Keep reading to find out what they all predicted.

Gemini: I can’t predict the actual 13 books that will make the 2026 Booker Prize longlist (historically announced in late July or August), as the official judges’ selections are kept strictly under wraps until the official announcement.

However, looking at the literary landscape, major releases, and past Booker trends (which love high-concept literary fiction, historical depth, and striking prose), here are 13 highly anticipated novels that are generating the kind of critical buzz that puts them squarely in the conversation for the 2026 prize:

Book Title	Author	UK Publisher	UK Publication Date
Vigil	George Saunders	Bloomsbury	January 27, 2026
Glyph	Ali Smith	Hamish Hamilton	Mid-2026
The Things We Never Say	Elizabeth Strout	Viking	May 7, 2026
John of John	Douglas Stuart	Picador	May 2026
The Newer World	Sebastian Barry	Faber & Faber	September 2026
Look What You Made Me Do	John Lanchester	Faber & Faber	March 2026
Son of Nobody	Yann Martel	Canongate	April 2026
The Palm House	Gwendoline Riley	Picador	April 2026
Departure(s)	Julian Barnes	Jonathan Cape	Early 2026
Stations	Louise Kennedy	Bloomsbury	September 2026
Sky City	Jacqueline Crooks	Jonathan Cape	August 2026
Crux	Gabriel Tallent	Fig Tree	February 2026
A Guardian and a Thief	Megha Majumdar	Scribner UK	January 29, 2026

Perplexity AI: Here’s a plausible 13-book prediction for the 2026 Booker Longlist, limited to books first published between October1, 2025 and September 30, 2026. I’m treating this as an informed forecast rather than a claim about the actual longlist:

• John of John by Douglas Stuart
• Uprising by Tahmima Anam
• Land by Maggie O’Farrell
• Son of Nobody by Yann Martel
• A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
• Transcription by Ben Lerner
• Floodlinies by Saleem Haddad
• This is where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
• Dominion by Addie E. Citchens
• Stations by Louise Kennedy
• Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli
• Said the Dead by Doireann Ni Ghriofa
• The end of Everything by M. John Harrison

Claude AI: Worth flagging up front: the actual 2026 Booker longlist (the “Booker Dozen”) drops in 11 days — Tuesday, 28 July 2026 — judged by Mary Beard, Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood, from novels published in the UK/Ireland between 1 Oct 2025 and 30 Sept 2026. So what follows is my best speculative guess based on buzz, pedigree, and eligibility — not a leak.

My 13 predictions:

1. John of John — Douglas Stuart (Picador, April 2026). Previous winner (Shuggie Bain), pre-publication blurbs from Colm Tóibín and Ann Patchett calling it his best yet — the closest thing to a lock this year.
2. Departure(s) — Julian Barnes (Jonathan Cape, Jan 2026). Billed as his last novel, released to coincide with his 80th birthday; strong reviews from the FT and Guardian. Sentimental favourite for judges.
3. The Palm House — Gwendoline Riley (Picador, April 2026). Rapturous reviews (Sunday Times, Sheila Heti); she’s a previous Women’s Prize finalist who’s never quite broken through to the Booker — this could be the one.
4. Land — Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press). Historical fiction from the Hamnet author, huge commercial and critical wattage.
5. The Newer World — Sebastian Barry (Faber). Two-time Booker shortlistee closing out his Days Without End trilogy — the kind of returning-heavyweight pick judges like.
6. Vigil — George Saunders (Bloomsbury). A former winner (Lincoln in the Bardo); any new Saunders novel is automatically in the conversation.
7. Whistler — Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury UK). Consistently Booker-adjacent buzz, though she’s never actually been longlisted before.
8. Exit Party — Emily St. John Mandel (Picador). Big “literary event” release; genre-blurring near-future novel in her Station Eleven mode.
9. The True True Story of Raja the Gullible — Rabih Alameddine (Corsair). Previously longlisted (The Angel of History); judges have shown they like his voice.
10. What We Can Know — actually ineligible (published 18 Sept 2025, just before the window), so I’ll swap in a strong dark-horse instead: a big Irish literary title from this cycle, most likely Kevin Barry or a comparable Faber/Canongate Irish novel — this slot is genuinely uncertain from my research.
11. A debut wildcard — the Booker almost always seats one or two under-the-radar first novels; expect a small-press or indie-published discovery here (Fitzcarraldo, Fig Tree, or And Other Stories are perennial sources).
12. A translated-into-English-by-the-author or Commonwealth voice — the panel (with poet Raymond Antrobus and critic Rebecca Liu) is likely to reach for a strong African, South Asian, or Caribbean voice; no confirmed title from my search, but this is a near-certain slot.
13. One more big transatlantic name — Colm Tóibín is publishing a story collection this cycle (The News from Dublin), which is only eligible if the stories are tightly linked; if not that, expect another major Picador/Faber literary novel I haven’t been able to pin down with confidence.

A few honest caveats: slots 10–13 are much shakier than 1–9 — I could find solid, dated, UK-published confirmation for the top nine, but the last four are informed guesses about categories the judges tend to fill rather than confirmed titles. If you want, I can dig further on Commonwealth/debut candidates specifically, since that’s where my search came up thinnest.

Chat GPT:

NOTE: You can see what chat GPT provided us with a few days ago, I asked it again with specifications listed in the prompt and here is the updated predictions list:

This is a fun exercise because the 2026 Booker longlist won’t be announced until 28 July 2026, and the eligible publication window is 1 October 2025 through 30 September 2026 (with publishers submitting eligible UK editions)

My predicted “Booker Dozen” (13 books):

Author	Book	UK Publisher	Confidence
Rachel Cusk	Parade (new novel expected in eligibility window)	Faber	★★★★★
Deborah Levy	Untitled novel	Hamish Hamilton	★★★★★
David Mitchell	New novel	Sceptre	★★★★☆
Kamila Shamsie	New novel	Bloomsbury	★★★★☆
Ocean Vuong	The Emperor of Gladness	Jonathan Cape	★★★★☆
Lauren Groff	New novel	Hutchinson Heinemann	★★★★☆
Colum McCann	New novel	Bloomsbury	★★★★☆
Jesmyn Ward	New novel	Bloomsbury	★★★☆☆
Jonathan Escoffery	Debut/second novel (if published in window)	4th Estate	★★★☆☆
Andrew O’Hagan	New novel	Faber	★★★☆☆
Sarah Moss	New novel	Picador	★★★☆☆
R. O. Kwon	New novel	Virago	★★★☆☆
Maggie O’Farrell	New novel (if it lands before deadline)	Tinder Press	★★☆☆☆

My “dark horse” alternatives

If any of the above miss the publication window, I’d expect one or more of these to replace them:

• Yiyun Li
• Ben Okri
• Patricia Lockwood
• Daisy Johnson
• Alan Hollinghurst (if his next novel appears sooner than expected)

My predicted shortlist from those 13

1. Rachel Cusk
2. Deborah Levy
3. Ocean Vuong
4. David Mitchell
5. Kamila Shamsie
6. Lauren Groff

Predicted winner

Rachel Cusk.

Her work has been circling the Booker conversation for years, and if her next novel lands in the eligibility window and continues the formal innovation of her recent fiction, it feels like the sort of book judges often rally around.

One caveat: because many major autumn 2026 titles have not yet been officially announced, every prediction necessarily includes some speculation about publication timing. The Booker’s eligibility also depends on the UK edition actually appearing within the submission window, which can differ from publication dates in other countries. 

We want to hear from you. Which AI did it best? Will the bots beat our panel? Find out on July 28th when the longlist will be released.