The 2026 jury will be chaired by LOEWE Foundation president Sheila Loewe, joined by leading figures from the design, architecture, and museum worlds, including Frida Escobedo, Deyan Sudjic, and Patricia Urquiola, as well as LOEWE’s creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who will join for the first time.

“The Craft Prize continues to reveal the extraordinary diversity and ambition of contemporary craft,” explains Loewe. “The works shortlisted for the 2026 edition demonstrate how deeply rooted traditions can be reimagined through innovation, skill and imagination. Bringing this exhibition to Singapore reflects the global dialogue at the heart of the Prize and our ongoing commitment to supporting artists at pivotal moments in their careers.”

Somers’ The Caretaker’s Clotheshorse (2025) reflects on the undervalued and often invisible labour of women within the domestic sphere. “By merging Zimbabwean traditions of cloth, clay, and weaving – crafts historically entrusted to women’s hands within the home – this work honours these mediums as vessels of memory and storytelling”, explains Somers. “Practices such as caregiving, cleaning, and craft-making have been marked by silence and erasure, and by reimagining these inherited crafts through shifts in scale, colour, and motif, this piece brings ancestral traditions into a contemporary context, creating space for visibility, recognition, and remembrance.”

The interior frame of this stoneware vessel was slowly coiled by hand, then punctured and burdened by weight to form its collapsing shape. A Binga-inspired woven clay technique is applied to the exterior, which is weighted, folding, and holding, yet also fraying. This interplay of cohesion and collapse becomes a symbol for the socio-political critiques embedded within Somers’ practice. Once bisque fired, it is intricately painted to employ weaving as both metaphor and mnemonic device, referencing grass baskets while drawing from blankets, kitchen cloths, and other humble textiles that quietly signal care within the home.

Works by the 30 finalists will be shown at the National Gallery Singapore from 13 May – 14 June 2026, with the winner set to be announced on 12 May. The winner will receive €50,000, with two special mentions also being awarded €5,000 each. This year also sees LOEWE partner with Belmond to launch three two-month residencies for selected artists at La Residencia in Mallorca, Spain.

COMPLETE LIST OF FINALISTS
Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón
Jobe Burns
Soohyun Chou
Morten Løbner Espersen
Liam Fleming
Oskar Gustafsson
Susan Halls
Gjertrud Hals
Chia-Chen Hsieh
Adelene Koh
Maria Koshenkova
Jong In Lee
Somyeong Lee
Misako Nakahira
Fadekemi Ogunsanya
Jieun Park
Jongjin Park
Rafael Pérez Fernández
Dorothea Prühl
Kirstie Rea
Vivi Rosa
Hervé Sabin
Xanthe Somers
Coco Sung
Nobuyuki Tanaka
Graziano Visintin
Rayah Wauters
Nan Wei
Jane Yang-D’Haene
Ayano Yoshizumi

ABOUT THE LOEWE CRAFT PRIZE

The Craft Prize was launched in 2016 by the LOEWE Foundation as a tribute to the Spanish brand's beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846, and as a way to highlight the importance of craft in modern-day culture. Any professional artisan aged over 18 can apply for the award, with the sole requirement being that the submitted work needs to combine an innovative application of the featured craft (inherited technique) with an original, contemporary artistic concept.