The International Booker Prize has announced landmark funding by Bukhman Philanthropies for the next ten years, with £1.4 million a year covering prize money, events, and its wider reading and translator development programmes.
The prize – which marks its tenth anniversary this year – will be renamed the Bukhman International Booker Prize in recognition of the commitment, and the winner’s prize fund will double to £100,000.
Putting the family name on the prize ‘was a thoughtful decision’, Daria Bukhman, co-founder and chair of Bukhman Philanthropies, tells Spear’s. ‘Putting our name behind this commitment felt important. It’s a statement of belief. I believe deeply in translated literature, in its impact and in its power to cross borders, languages and differences.’
Bukhman Philanthropies is the grant-giving foundation she established with her husband Dmitry Bukhman, who co-founded the mobile games developer Playrix with his brother Igor. The brothers ranked tenth on the 2026 Sunday Times Rich List, with a combined fortune of £14.26 billion. The foundation, which Daria runs, was established in January 2025 and has since committed nearly $100 million in multi-year grants across its three focus areas: neonatal and maternal health, mental health and wellbeing of children, and literature.
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Found in translation
Bukhman grew up in Russia, a linguist by training – English was her university major – and translated fiction shaped her reading life decades before it became part of her philanthropy.
‘My family didn’t have money to travel abroad. For me, [literature] was my gateway to the world.’ Her favourite authors, among others, included the German Erich Maria Remarque, the French Françoise Sagan and the Japanese Haruki Murakami, all in Russian translation. ‘Their [novels] felt so authentic and original. You don’t really understand you’re reading a translation.’
Under the agreement between the Booker Prize Foundation and Bukhman Philanthropies, the winner’s prize fund doubles to £100,000, split equally between author and translator. ‘We wanted to double the overall prize pot for the International Booker Prize because we felt it was fair for the author and translator of a translated work of fiction to each get the same prize money as the author of an English-language work would get through the Booker Prize,’ Bukhman says. ‘The translator, and translation in general, is a creative act that needs to be celebrated.’
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When Bukhman began looking for a way to fund literature, her first thought was to launch a prize of her own. ‘The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t pinpoint how this prize would be different from other prizes,’ Bukhman explains. Instead, she picked up the phone to Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation. ‘I loved their values, ethos, credibility and the vast range of their approach. I realised I really wanted to back them as an organisation.’
Committing for a full decade is a statement, she asserts, of her belief that ‘in an age shaped by speed, disruption and AI advancement, translated fiction offers us the opposite: time to slow down, to reflect and to broaden our perspective’. Bukhman does not however expect AI advancements to reach fiction itself. ‘At the moment, AI cannot produce a great piece of fiction. As a reader myself, you’re reading for the connection with the author. It’s a connection from human to human through a book.’
The proof is in the printing
For Bukhman, success means a vibrant ecosystem of translated fiction, with more young readers and rising book sales.
UK sales of translated fiction are up 31 per cent since the prize launched in 2016, according to research by industry sales tracker NielsenIQ BookData. ‘That’s a great metric for me,’ she says. Five of the prize’s winners and nominees have also gone on to win the Nobel Prize in literature – a record that, she adds, ‘speaks to the credibility of the prize and how it’s changing the global perspective on translated fiction’.
The 2026 winner, Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King – the first book translated from Taiwanese Mandarin to take the prize – sold out in the UK within days of the May announcement of its win. UK sales of the book have since risen from 10,000 copies to 49,000, its Taiwanese publisher has printed a further 110,000 copies to meet demand at home, and translation rights have been sold in 32 territories, up from 14 before the book was nominated for the prize.
Its commercial success came after the ten-year terms between Bukhman Philanthropies and the Booker Prize Foundation were already largely settled. ‘We were already deep in the work on the partnership, so it didn’t actually change anything for us but it did make us feel even more confident in the decision.’
It is those results, not the name on the prize, by which she wants to be measured. ‘Honestly, I don’t think about legacy,’ she says. ‘It’s not about people saying something about me – it’s just doing things, step by step, and arriving at a destination.’
The first Bukhman International Booker Prize will be awarded in May 2027. Submissions from publishers opened on 2 July 2026.
