MacArthur Foundation Names 2026 ‘Genius Grant’ Fellows
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Tuesday unveiled its 2026 class of 20 fellows, the unrestricted awards popularly known as “genius grants,” honoring scholars, scientists, and artists whose work spans climate policy, Indigenous history, public health, and the performing arts. Each fellow will receive $800,000 paid in quarterly installments over five years, with no strings attached.
The announcement, reported by NPR, marks the 45th anniversary of the fellowship program. As in past years, recipients do not apply for the award and are not told they are under consideration; they are chosen through a yearslong process drawing on the recommendations of anonymous nominators and a selection committee, and typically learn of their selection only when the foundation calls.
Who Was Selected
The 2026 cohort ranges in age from 29 to 69 and reflects a deliberately interdisciplinary mix. According to a full class list compiled by the Associated Press, the fellows include Holly Jean Buck, a University at Buffalo sociologist studying communities’ role in the clean-energy transition; Ellora Derenoncourt, a Princeton University labor economist examining the roots of U.S. racial wealth disparities; and Kate Spradley, a Texas State University forensic anthropologist who works to identify and repatriate the remains of migrants who died along the Texas-Mexico border.
Also named were Christine Sun Kim, a Berlin-based artist who reframes sound as a visual and tactile medium; Maaza Mengiste, a novelist at Wesleyan University whose fiction explores the human cost of political conflict; and Immanuel Wilkins, a 29-year-old New York alto saxophonist and composer who is the youngest member of the class. At 69, public artist and longtime Navajo Nation physician Chip Thomas is the oldest.
NPR noted that the fellows converge in unexpected ways, grouping them thematically around climate change solutions, American history and economics, political violence and memory, human health, and questions of communication and healing.
Strong Ties to Higher Education
More than half of this year’s fellows — 11 of the 20 — hold affiliations with colleges or universities, Inside Higher Ed reported. That includes Princeton historians Elizabeth Ellis, whose scholarship reframes Indigenous diplomacy, and Ariel Ron of Southern Methodist University, who studies the role of Northern agriculture in nineteenth-century economic growth, along with Stanford organic chemist Song Lin and University of Chicago physicist Vincenzo Vitelli.
The foundation framed the class as a continuation of a long tradition. “For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress,” Kristen Mack, the foundation’s vice president of communications, fellows and partnerships, said in a statement. “The 2026 Fellows continue that creative tradition—they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research.”
A Cross-Disciplinary Class
The award’s defining feature remains its lack of conditions. Fellows are not required to produce anything specific, and the foundation does not evaluate their performance during the five-year term — a structure intended to give recipients the freedom to take creative and intellectual risks.
Artforum highlighted the three visual artists in this year’s cohort: Kim, Los Angeles-based Rodney McMillian, and Vincent Valdez, who divides his time between Houston and San Antonio. McMillian, the publication noted, uses thrifted domestic objects — blankets, carpets, and broken furniture — to examine economic marginalization and the history of the American South, while Valdez draws on Chicano traditions and Western narrative painting to explore injustice and resistance in monumental canvases.
The class also includes a cluster of researchers working at the intersection of science and social justice, among them Duke University philosopher Felipe De Brigard, who studies memory and forgiveness with victims of political violence in Colombia, and environmental scientist Kaiyu Guan of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who combines satellite data and machine learning to improve crop yields.
What to Watch
The MacArthur Foundation is marking the 45th anniversary with a series titled “Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45,” featuring nationwide events and public conversations about the fellows’ work. The unrestricted nature of the grant means the practical impact of the 2026 awards may take years to surface, as recipients use the funding to pursue projects that might otherwise go unfunded.
For now, the announcement underscores a persistent theme of the fellowship: that transformative work rarely fits neatly into a single discipline. Whether in forensic labs on the border, chemistry benches at Stanford, or performance spaces in Zurich and New York, this year’s fellows span a range of fields that the foundation has chosen to recognize as part of a shared creative tradition.
Note: The MacArthur Foundation is among NPR’s financial supporters.