On the map of European literature, Albanian appeared this year from Prishtina; Tirana will have to wait for its turn.

On 29 May 2026, at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, during the International Book Fair, the laureate of the European Union Prize for Literature was announced. The main prize went to the Czech author Dora Kaprálová for her novel “Mariborská hypnóza”, while two special mentions went to Hélène Frédérick of France and Vladimir Vujović of Montenegro. They were chosen by a seven-member European jury from fourteen authors selected in February by national organisations in fourteen countries.

Among them was an author who writes in Albanian: Arben Idrizi, nominated by Kosovo for his short-story collection “Njeriu që habitej dhe tregime të tjera” (The Man Who Wondered and Other Stories). The 2026 list of countries comprised Armenia, Croatia, Czechia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Sweden. Albania was not among them.

Rotation, not exclusion

Albania's absence is not a sign of punishment or neglect. The prize, launched in 2009 by the Creative Europe programme to highlight emerging European authors and the continent's linguistic diversity, works on a rotating system: each year roughly a third of the programme's participating countries take part, so that every country is represented once in each three-year cycle. Albania and Kosovo both belong to this network, as candidate or potential candidate countries, but their turns fall in different years.

The record of participation shows this rhythm clearly. For Albania, laureates or nominees have included Ben Blushi with “Otello, Arapi i Vlorës” in 2014, Rudi Erebara with “Epika e yjeve të mëngjesit” in 2017, Tom Kuka with “Flama” in 2021 and, in 2024, Rita Petro with “Lindur së prapthi”. For Kosovo, Shpëtim Selmani won in 2020 with “Libërthi i dashurisë”, while Ag Apolloni received a special mention in 2023 for “Kësulëkuqja, përrallë për të rritur”. Idrizi thus continues a steady line.

Two states, one literature

What stands out in this record is that Albanian is represented in the European prize twice in every cycle, once from Tirana and once from Prishtina. For a literature written in a small language, this is a rare advantage: two national juries, two different publishing scenes, two ways of choosing what to present to Europe. In 2026, Kosovo's choice was a book of short stories, a genre that seldom draws the attention of the big fairs.

This difference matters for Albanian readers too. The market for Albanian books remains divided by a state border, and not every book published on one side reaches readers on the other. The European prize, paradoxically, can become one of the routes by which readers on one side learn what is being written on the other. When an author from Kosovo enters a European shortlist, he is introduced at once to foreign publishers and to Albanian readers who had not encountered him before.

Literature ahead of the negotiations

The prize has nothing to do with negotiating chapters or the political process of accession. Yet it shows something that political discourse often forgets: in culture, the Western Balkans are already part of a shared European space. Authors from Albania and Kosovo are listed alongside Finnish, French and Swedish authors not as guests but as equal participants, under the same rules and with the same chance of being translated.

That is also the prize's limit. It gives an author visibility, not readers. Without good translators, without publishers willing to take risks and without programmes that support translation from Albanian, the name of a shortlisted author may remain just a line on the organisers' website. The real work begins after the list.

Albania will return to the competition when its turn comes round in the cycle. Until then, its absence from Warsaw should be read not as a loss but as time to prepare: to ask which Albanian books of recent years deserve to travel to Europe, and who will make sure they are translated and read.

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