The winners will be announced November 6th, with $32,000 in prizes awarded.
Key Dates
- October 30, 2026: Exhibition opens at Arta Gallery, Distillery District, Toronto (14 Distillery Lane, Toronto, ON M5A 3C4)
- November 6, 2026: Awards Gala; winner and honourable mentions announced
- November 8, 2026: Exhibition closes
TORONTO, CANADA, October 7, 2026—The Kingston Prize has announced its 2026 cohort of 30 finalists, chosen from almost 400 submissions nationwide. The suite of paintings, which range from hyperrealistic renditions to domestic scenes of loved ones, will be shown at Arta Gallery in Toronto’s Distillery District from October 30 to November 8, 2026, in a free exhibition. The winner will be announced November 6th in a private award ceremony and receive the grand prize of $25,000. Two honourable mentions will receive $3,000 each. A People’s Choice award will receive $1,000.
Founded in 2005 by Kaaren and Julian Brown, the prize will be held annually for the first time starting this year. This is a response to the overwhelming demand for Canadian art and support, along with the depth of figurative painting happening in the country.
“Canada is known around the world for its spectacular landscapes, but our greatest strength has always been our people,” says Jason Donville, Chair of The Kingston Prize. “Portraiture reminds us that every face tells a story, and together those stories become the story of our nation.”
The Kingston Prize captures the faces of Canada, from coast to coast. This year’s finalists hail from Dawson City, Yukon, to Petty Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador. In true celebration of Canada’s diversity, many of the Canadian finalists were born elsewhere, including India, China, South Korea, Mexico, and Nigeria. These portraits tell intimate and personal stories, with many of the finalists painting the people closest to them: friends, family members, neighbours and themselves.
The 2026 jury is chaired by Lauchlan Reid, Chair of Illustration at OCAD University, who returns from the 2025 jury. He is joined by Mireille Eagan, Curator of Contemporary Art at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s, and Kanika Anand, Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary.
“The jury brought a wide array of painting and curatorial experiences and perspectives to what portrait painting can mean, and how the intersections of identity, relationships, and technique can shape a narrative,” says Reid. “ I feel these final thirty paintings represent an inspiring and compelling meta-portrait of where Canadian portraiture has been, where it is and, most importantly, where it is going in the greater context of art in this country.”
For Toronto painter Charles Bierk, portraiture began as a response to loss. His large-scale, black-and-white oil portraits of the people closest to him speak to The Kingston Prize’s founding purpose of recording Canadian life. The photorealistic paintings are time-intensive and laborious; the paintings become embedded with the years it takes him to make them, he notes: “The painting is a quiet reflection on time, on how long it takes to make a painting, to live a life, and to find an ever-evolving normal.”
“Working in large-scale black-and-white oil paintings, I paint people close to me as a way of considering presence, memory and time,” says Bierk. “The practice grew out of losing both of my parents at a young age, and an impulse to place people prominently in time, to preserve their presence and search for a kind of simulated permanence on canvas.”
Several finalists are returning to the prize. Opeyemi Olukotun, who received an honourable mention in 2025 for A Cup of Silence, returns with A Cup of Silence II. Lauren Crazybull, James Lee Chiahan and Nelson White were 2025 finalists. Matthew Tarini was a finalist in 2015 and 2023, Charles Choi in 2019 and 2023, and John McDonald in 2018. Roselina Hung, a finalist in 2009 and 2011, returns after a 15-year break.
For returning finalist Lauren Crazybull, a Niitsítapi (Kainai) and Dené artist, portraiture is a way to push back against a single, flattened image of Indigenous life. Her portrait of Faye HeavyShield—which Crazybull notes took three tries to get right—depicts half of HeavyShield’s face in shadow, a metaphorical nod to what is seen and what is not.
“There is a common, romanticized one-dimensional image of Indigenous people that I try to avoid,” Crazybull says. “All of the parts that we carry: visible and hidden make us whole.” When the artist asked HeavyShield what she thought of the finished portrait, HeavyShield replied: “Blood, peace, periphery, light. You allow all.”
Last year’s winning portrait, Louise Kermode’s Madonna in a Tulip Chair, has entered the collection at The Rooms Art Gallery in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The portrait depicts Madonna (Donna) Meaney, who modelled for both Christopher and Mary Pratt. A testament to the quality and strength of Canadian portraiture, and The Kingston Prize’s role in bringing it into the public record.
The 2026 Finalists
Gracien Amisi (Ottawa, ON) Kulwant Singh Bhullar (Brampton, ON) Charles Bierk (Toronto, ON) Anindita Chakraborty (Montréal, QC) Charles Choi (Whitby, ON) Lauren Crazybull (Vancouver, BC) Claire Drummond (Elgin, QC) Carlos Fentanes (Uxbridge, ON) Tiff Frost (Montréal, QC) Roselina Hung (Vancouver, BC) Miles Ingrassia (Toronto, ON) Todd Lachance (Calgary, AB) Haejung Lee (Toronto, ON) James Lee Chiahan (Montréal, QC) Tong Luo (Levittown, NY) John McDonald (Petty Harbour, NL) Rebekah Miller (Dawson City, YT) Anoosh Mubashar (Whitby, ON) Opeyemi Olukotun (Brandon, MB) Sherry Park (Brampton, ON) Tristram Pinney (Toronto, ON) Emma Rach-Syslak (Calgary, AB) Ginok Song (Petty Harbour, NL) Pierre St-Jacques (Toronto, ON) Matthew Tarini (Hamilton, ON) k. Trembler (Albanel, QC) Pamela Vickerson (Calgary, AB) Georgia Wang (Toronto, ON) Nelson White (St. John’s, NL) Shye Zhang (Scarborough, ON)
The 2026 Jury
Lauchlan Reid (Chair) is an artist, illustrator and educator, and Chair of Illustration at OCAD University. His practice draws on the historical traditions of Western European image-making, including oil painting, metalpoint drawing and printmaking. He is a founding member of the illustration collective Team Macho and co-directs OCAD University’s Sustainable Colour Lab, which revives lost historical materials and techniques.
Mireille Eagan is Curator of Contemporary Art at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s. She has curated more than 150 exhibitions, including Jenny Holzer: Truisms, Christopher Pratt: The Places I Go and the nationally touring Mary Pratt retrospective. She is the author of Christopher Pratt: Life & Work, published this October by the Art Canada Institute, and a recipient of CARFAC’s Critical Eye Award.
Kanika Anand is Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary and a member of the curatorial team for the Indian Ceramics Triennale. Her curatorial work spans Canada, the United States, France and India, including a fellowship at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble. Her writing has appeared in Art India, Ocula and Art Basel Magazine.
About The Kingston Prize
Founded in 2005, The Kingston Prize celebrates contemporary portraiture to create a historical record of Canadians by Canadians. The national competition invites Canadian artists to submit portraits of Canadian citizens or permanent residents, based on real-life encounters and personal relationships. Each year, a jury selects 30 finalists for an exhibition that gives Canadian artists national exposure and cultivates conversation. The winner receives $25,000, and two honourable mentions receive $3,000 each.
The prize was founded by Kaaren and Julian Brown, inspired by Australia’s Archibald Prize, which they encountered while living in Sydney in the late 1960s.
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