Chanel Grants €1m ‘For Artists to Thrive on Their Own Terms’

Chanel Culture Fund has awarded a total of €1 million in prize money to ten artists, as part of the third edition of the Chanel NEXT Prize. The luxury fashion house’s biennial international arts and culture prize is given to contemporary artists who are ‘redefining their disciplines’ and ‘shaping the future of culture’. 

This year’s cohort of winners includes visual artists Álvaro Urbano, Ayoung Kim, Pan Daijing, Emeka Ogboh, and Pol Taburet; musician Ambrose Akinmusire; choreographers Andrea Peña and Marco da Silva Ferreira; fashion designer Bárbara Sánchez-Kane; and filmmaker Payal Kapadia. 

Urbano is renowned for creating lifelike replicas of botanical elements, Kim for the technology she uses to explore the digital age, and Pan for her ability to transform architecture into sensory experiences. Ogboh, meanwhile, explores and addresses questions surrounding globalisation through embodied encounters, and Taburet is noted for the enigmatic characters that haunt his work.

Yana Peel, Chanel’s president of arts, culture and heritage, described the prize as one that ‘creates the conditions for artists to thrive on their own terms’.

‘Each winner is a trailblazer shaping the now and defining the next with creativity and audacity. Following their journeys will be nothing short of thrilling,’ she continued.

The ten artists each receive €100,000 in ‘unrestricted funding’, intended to give winners the opportunity to realise new projects without constraints. As part of the prize, recipients are also offered the opportunity to participate in a two-year mentorship and networking programme facilitated with Chanel’s partner organisations, including London’s Royal College of Art.

This year’s jury was composed of Tate Modern international art curator Alvin Li, British Film Institute chief executive Ben Roberts, Serpentine artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist, artist Cao Fei, and actor Tilda Swinton. 

Past recipients of Chanel’s NEXT Prize, established in 2021, include Ho Tzu Nyen and Dalton Paula (both 2024), and Precious Okoyomon (2022). —[O]

Main image: Ayoung Kim, Body^n (2025). Performed at Canyon, New York (13 November 2025). Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk.