Serpentine and The FLAG to Partner on New Global Prize

Serpentine Galleries, in London, and the New York-based FLAG Art Foundation have united to create a valuable new artists’ prize. For the next decade, the Serpentine x Flag Art Foundation Prize will make an award, biennially, to an early- to mid-career artist, with the prize-winner receiving £200,000 (US $270,000).

Each winner of an award will have a solo exhibition, opening at either Serpentine, in the centre of Hyde Park, or at The FLAG Art Foundation in its non-collecting, non-profit exhibition space in Chelsea, midtown Manhattan. These shows will then be rethought for the partner institution, instituting a reciprocal creative conversation.

The first winner, chosen by a jury of curators, art historians, and artists, will be announced in 2026, with the first exhibition due to open at Serpentine in Autumn 2027, before transferring to FLAG in Spring 2028. (The £200,000 prize compares favourably with those given by other UK-based awards: the winner of the long-established Turner Prize receives £25,000.)

Artists nominated for the prize can be of any age and from anywhere in the world. They must have been exhibiting professionally for less than ten years while working to build a career through grants and museum and gallery exhibitions. 

The Serpentine, led by Bettina Korek, its CEO, and its artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, is known for its exhibitions of leading contemporary artists — Peter Doig: House of Music runs until February 8, 2026 — and for the research and developmental support it has given to digital artists in the past decade, especially those working with artificial intelligence (AI), the blockchain and gaming-based art. That support is managed by the Serpentine Arts Technologies team, with that team’s research findings published in annual Future Art Ecosystems (FAE) reports.

In recent years a sequence of artists working with technology including Gabriel Massan (2023), Refik Anadol (2024), Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst (2024-25) and, most recently, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, with “The Delusion” (2025), have received important single-artist exhibitions at the gallery. The latest Future Art Ecosystems report, Art x Creative R&D (FAE5), examines “artistic experimentation, technological innovation, and cross-sector collaborations”.

The FLAG Art Foundation was founded by Glenn Fuhrman, an art patron and philanthropist, and is dedicated to supporting mid-career artists around the world. Over the past six years, it has supported the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, co-organized with The Contemporary Austin, which provides artists with direct funds and exhibition backing. The artists supported include Nicole Eisenman (2020), Tarek Atoui (2022), Lubaina Himid (2024), and Sable Elyse Smith (2026). (Himid is to represent the UK at the 2026 Venice Biennale.)

“What makes this prize so significant,” Obrist says of the Serpentine x Flag Art Foundation Prize, “is its focus on artists who have not yet received the visibility or recognition they deserve. This has long been central to Serpentine’s programme: from presenting the first UK monographic exhibitions for emerging artists to championing overlooked voices whose contributions merit greater acknowledgment.”

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