Move Over, Turner? Serpentine and FLAG Art Foundation Launch U.K.’s Newest Art Prize
A new initiative between the London gallery and New York nonprofit will see a total of £1 million distributed across five artists over the next decade. Save to My Ocula
The Serpentine and the FLAG Art Foundation have jointly launched the United Kingdom’s largest contemporary art prize in monetary value, debuting next year and to be awarded biennially over the next ten years.
The Serpentine x FLAG Art Foundation Prize will award each of its five recipients £200,000, along with a transatlantic solo exhibition.
The inaugural winner will present an exhibition at the Serpentine in London in autumn 2027, followed by a ‘reimagined’ iteration at the FLAG Art Foundation in New York the following spring.
FLAG Art Foundation founder Glenn Fuhrman described the partnership as ‘FLAG’s most significant commitment to artists beyond the United States’, noting he ‘could not be happier’ to team up with Serpentine.
The announcement comes one week before the much-anticipated award ceremony for the 2025 Turner Prize, presented by Tate and historically regarded as the U.K.’s most prestigious and internationally recognised art prize. This year’s winner will be announced next Tuesday at Cartwright Hall in Bradford, with the shortlisted artists including Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami, and Zadie Xa.
Despite Turner’s first-place winnings of £25,000 paling in comparison to other U.K. art awards, including the Artes Mundi Prize at £40,000 and the National Portrait Gallery’s Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award at £35,000, the prize continues to receive significant press and national attention.
The U.S. funding behind the Serpentine x FLAG Art Foundation Prize, however, dwarfs all of these prize funds by a significant margin and is a huge sum by British standards. For context, £200,000 would put the receiving artist comfortably in the top 1 percent of U.K. earners, but only in the top 10 percent of earners in the U.S.
However, unlike the Turner Prize, which is limited to British nominees, the Serpentine x FLAG prize has no national or geographic restrictions, only requiring nominated artists to have exhibited professionally for less than ten years whilst actively growing their practice and gaining international recognition. —[O]
Main image: The FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2025). Photo: © Steven Probert.
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