King Felipe and Queen Letizia are due at the Barcelona ceremony on Thursday. The contest drew a record 1,424 manuscripts; nine finalists remain after one entry was removed for prior publication.
King Felipe and Queen Letizia will preside over the Planeta Prize ceremony in Barcelona on Thursday, October 15, 2026. The winner of the 75th edition will receive €1 million; the finalist will receive €200,000. Editorial Planeta is due to publish both books.
A record 1,424 manuscripts entered the contest. The jury has kept nine finalists in contention after removing one of the original ten because the work had been published before the verdict.
The ceremony has outgrown its original venue. Organizers moved it from the nearby Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya to Pavilion 1 at the Montjuïc site of Fira de Barcelona after attendance forecasts exceeded the initial capacity. About 1,200 guests are expected at the anniversary literary dinner, where the results are due to be announced from around 9 p.m. Barcelona has also hosted major industry gatherings such as the FoodTech exhibition. Planeta needs the larger space for its gala.
The shortlist spans historical fiction and family stories. Contemporary novels are represented too. The finalists are La sombra de Isabel by Pedro Regalado Rodríguez; Letraherido by Pepe M. Carrascosa; Alba Naranja by Tamsilt El Hayani, a pseudonym; Los caminantes by Martín Guerrero, a pseudonym; Kintsugi o tres almas rotas by Hugalma de la Sierra, a pseudonym; La noche de los faroles by Mencía Salazar, a pseudonym; Los que faltan by Luz Ventura, a pseudonym; El jardín de Lennon by Jorge Herrero, a pseudonym; and La mujer desnuda sale a las once by Bernardo Galeana.
The removed entry was Cuando tu muerte es mi liberación, submitted under the pseudonym Lita Rowe. Organizers excluded it after establishing that it had been published previously.
Planeta says it checked the finalists’ manuscripts for AI use. President José Creuheras said authors declare in their contracts that they have not used AI, and the publisher also screens manuscripts with specialist tools. He acknowledged those tools are not completely reliable. Planeta runs additional checks on manuscripts it considers for publication. Editorial division chief Jesús Badenes cited Amazon’s decision to limit Kindle uploads to ten books per author per day in the United States, a restriction that followed a surge in submissions.
Creuheras rejected speculation that the anniversary edition would change the prize’s literary standards. He said readers determine the project’s success, pointing to more than 47 million Planeta Prize books sold over its history. That works out to an average of 625,000 per edition.
José Manuel Lara Hernández created the prize in 1952 to encourage reading and help writers earn a living, Creuheras said. This year’s 1,424 entries set a participation record. The group has added French to its publishing activity, which already covered Spanish and Catalan, as well as Portuguese and English.
Badenes called the Spanish book market’s sustained expansion since 2013 a “Spanish miracle.” The growth followed the sector’s delayed downturn after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Bookshop sales have risen 56% since then, with two-thirds of that increase coming in the past five years.
Bookshops account for 72% of printed-book sales in Spain. Independent stores make up 40% of those sales. Digital book sales have stopped growing, Badenes said.
He also pointed to young readers and strong demand for fiction. Manga has performed well too. So has murdoku, a puzzle format combining cluedo and sudoku. The group’s Temas de Hoy imprint has sold close to one million copies.
