The MacArthur Foundation named its 2026 class of fellows on Tuesday, September 29, 2026: 20 people who will each receive $800,000, paid out over five years, with no conditions attached to how they spend it.
The award is better known by the nickname the foundation itself does not use. What makes it unusual is less the money than the mechanics. There is no application. The foundation works from what it describes as an ever-changing list of outside nominators, whose recommendations go to a confidential selection committee. Recipients learn they are being considered only when they are told they have won, and they file no progress reports afterwards.
Who is on the list
The 2026 class mixes laboratory science, history, and work made for a stage or a gallery wall.
Among the scientists and social scientists: Holly Jean Buck, 45, a sociologist in Buffalo, New York, who studies what local communities actually do about climate change mitigation; Marika Holland, 58, a climate scientist in Boulder, Colorado, working on ice cover and polar ecosystems; Kaiyu Guan, 41, an environmental scientist in Urbana, Illinois, who applies machine learning to crop yields; Song Lin, 40, an organic chemist at Stanford developing more sustainable synthetic reactions; Vincenzo Vitelli, 48, a physicist in Chicago; and Liangfang Zhang, 46, a chemical engineer in San Diego building nanotechnologies for disease treatment.
Among the historians, economists, and philosophers: Ellora Derenoncourt, 39, a labor economist at Princeton working on racial wealth disparities; Elizabeth Ellis, 38, a historian also at Princeton, on Indigenous conceptions of nationhood; Ariel Ron, 48, a historian in Dallas writing on nineteenth-century agricultural economics; and Felipe De Brigard, 47, a philosopher at Durham, North Carolina, using cognitive science to examine memory and forgiveness.
Among the writers and artists: the poet Layli Long Soldier, 54, of Santa Fe; the fiction writers Maaza Mengiste, 55, of Middletown, Connecticut, and Bryan Washington, 33, based in Tokyo; the artists Christine Sun Kim, 46, in Berlin, Rodney McMillian, 57, in Los Angeles, Vincent Valdez, 49, working between Houston and San Antonio, and Chip Thomas, 69, a public artist in Flagstaff, Arizona, whose work appears on walls across the Navajo Nation; the choreographer Trajal Harrell, based in Zurich; and Immanuel Wilkins, 29, a jazz saxophonist and composer in New York and the youngest fellow in the class.
One name sits outside the usual categories altogether. Kate Spradley, 53, a forensic anthropologist in San Marcos, Texas, works on identifying the remains of migrants who died crossing into the United States — technical work whose output is a name handed back to a family.
The argument for unrestricted money
"They explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research," said Kristen Mack, the foundation's vice president of communications for fellows and partnerships.
The design is the point. Most research and arts funding in the United States is tied to a proposal: a defined project, a budget, a deliverable, and a review at the end. The MacArthur fellowship inverts that. It funds a person on the bet that the next thing they do is not yet describable, and it pays in installments across five years rather than in one lump, which in practice functions as a salary floor.
Three fellows in this class are based abroad — in Berlin, Zurich, and Tokyo — a reminder that the award follows the work rather than the address.
Reporting from the MacArthur Foundation's announcement as carried by the Associated Press and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
