At a gala held on June 12 at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), Anna Mari Liivrand and Hanna Samoson were announced as the winners of the Köler Prize 2026 Grand Prize, while Keiu Maasik received the Audience Choice Award.
The €15,000 grand prix was awarded by the indie video game studio ZA/UM. For the second time in the history of the prize, it was split between two artists. The €5,000 Audience Prize fund was supported by the law firm COBALT. All nominees – Anna Mari Liivrand, Darja Popolitova, Hanna Samoson, Keiu Maasik and Taavi Suisalu – received a brooch designed by Sille Luiga as a gift.
The recipient(s) of the Köler Prize Grand Prize were selected by a jury consisting of Greek curator and art historian Panos Giannikopoulos, Monika Lipšic, curator of the Rupert Art Residency and public programs, Paul O’Neill, curator and artistic director of PUBLICS, Christoph Platz-Gallus, director of Kunstverien Hannover; and Tanja Muravskaja and Anna Škodenko, the grand prix winners of the last Köler Prize held in 2018.
The jury unanimously decided to award the 2026 Köler Prize jointly to two artists. The decision reflected the conviction that the most compelling proposition in this year’s nominees’ exhibition was not a singular artistic perspective, but rather the productive tension between two remarkably distinct approaches to contemporary art. All of this year’s nominees demonstrate the high level of the local art scene.
While these practices differ significantly in their methods, aesthetics, and points of departure, both laureates demonstrate an exceptional commitment to expanding the possibilities of contemporary art: one through the sensorial and affective dimensions of experience, the other through an analytical and architectural gaze.
The jury recognised Hanna Samoson’s intuitive sculptural language and her consistently nomadic approach, generating spaces that allow uncertainty and ambiguity to remain active forces, and environments that are simultaneously intimate and open-ended. Anna Mari Liivrand’s artist practice, by contrast, operates through a rigorous engagement with historical conditions, languages and scale. Her work reveals how individual experience is entangled with larger structures and systems. The jury valued the clarity and consistency of her artistic practice, as well as her ability to intertwine a dangerous sharpness with intimate beauty.
The Köler Prize 2026 nominees’ exhibition remains open until 5 July. The catalogue can be purchased at the exhibition, and the film introducing the nominees’ practices, “Screen Tests for the Köler Prize”, can be viewed at the exhibition, on Jupiter, and on Arkaader, the streaming platform for Estonian film heritage.
The Köler Prize major project and gala were supported by: ZA/UM, COBALT, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Ministry of Culture of Estonia, the City of Tallinn, Akzo Nobel, Kanuti Gildi Saal, Von Krahl Theatre, Ekspeditsioon, Punch Drinks and Põhjala Brewery.