🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of The Turner Prize

General knowledge · Film, TV & games

The Turner Prize

Established 1984

Art — the Tate's annual award for a British artist

Britain's best-known art award, established at the Tate in 1984 by the Patrons of New Art and named after J. M. W. Turner. It is given for an outstanding exhibition or presentation in the preceding year by a British artist, or an artist based in Britain; for most of its history the shortlist was restricted to those under fifty, a rule dropped in 2017. The winner receives £25,000 and each of the other shortlisted artists £10,000. Since 2011 the exhibition has moved outside London in alternate years, reaching Bradford, the UK City of Culture, in 2025.

How to spot them

  • ▸The Tate, an annual shortlist of four, and a televised announcement each December
  • ▸Named after the painter of light, steam and shipwrecks; founded in 1984
  • ▸£25,000 to the winner, £10,000 to each of the others; the under-50 rule abolished in 2017
  • ▸A reliable annual row in the press about whether it is art at all

Key facts

Established at the Tate in 1984 by the Patrons of New Art, and named after a painter of light and steam (1984)

Malcolm Morley was the first winner

A concrete cast of the inside of a condemned East End terraced house, 1993 (1993)

Rachel Whiteread's House; on the same night the K Foundation gave her £40,000 as 'worst artist'

Damien Hirst's cow and calf, each bisected and set in formaldehyde, 1995 (1995)

Mother and Child (Divided)

Work No. 227 — an empty gallery in which the lights go on and off every five seconds (2001)

Martin Creed's winning work, which drew eggs thrown at the gallery walls in protest

A potter collecting the cheque in 2003 in a dress, as his alter ego Claire (2003)

Grayson Perry, the first ceramicist to win

An architecture and design collective won in 2015 for its work on derelict Liverpool housing (2015)

Assemble, for the Granby Four Streets project in Toxteth — the first non-individual, non-fine-art winner

The age limit of fifty, abolished in 2017 (2017)

Lubaina Himid, then 63, won that year and became the oldest winner and the first Black woman to take the prize

Hanging cocoons of wrapped fabric, rope and tape, shown at Cartwright Hall and rewarded in December 2025 (2025)

Nnena Kalu, announced at Bradford Grammar School on 9 December 2025 and broadcast live on BBC News

Quick-fire facts

  • •Founded in 1984 by the Patrons of New Art at the Tate and named after J. M. W. Turner
  • •The winner receives £25,000; the three other shortlisted artists get £10,000 each
  • •Malcolm Morley was the first winner, in 1984; the prize was suspended in 1990 for lack of a sponsor
  • •Entrants had to be under fifty until the rule was abolished in 2017
  • •Rachel Whiteread won in 1993 for House and was simultaneously given the K Foundation's £40,000 'worst artist' award
  • •Tracey Emin was shortlisted in 1999 for My Bed but did not win; Steve McQueen took the prize that year
  • •Grayson Perry, who won in 2003, was the first ceramicist to do so
  • •Assemble, an architecture collective, won in 2015 for the Granby Four Streets housing project in Liverpool
  • •In 2019 the four shortlisted artists asked to share the prize, and did
  • •Nnena Kalu won in 2025, at an exhibition held at Cartwright Hall in Bradford, that year's UK City of Culture

Drill it — 9 cards

1 / 9new card

Sources