By Cat Woods -
The nationally celebrated portrait prize that compels attention annually and attracts a hefty monetary award ($100,000) for the winner, the Archibald Prize has unsurprisingly drawn an enormous pool of NSW entrants this year. Of the 2524 entrants to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026, 1650 NSW hopefuls were in the running.
Whittling down to the finalists is no mean feat. Indeed, judges had 1034 Archibald Prize entries that were refined down to 59 finalists.
On 8 May, it was announced that Melbourne-based artist Richard Lewer won the Archibald Prize 2026 for his portrait of Pitjantjatjara Elder, senior artist and ngangkari (traditional healer) Iluwanti Ken.
All winning and finalist works will be exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from Saturday 9 May to Sunday 16 August 2026.
Following the exhibition at the Art Gallery, the Archibald Prize 2026 finalist works will tour to six venues across New South Wales and Victoria.
Entries in the Archibald Prize are eligible to be considered for the $3000 Packing Room Prize, now in its 35th year. The Packing Room Prize was first awarded in 1991 and is chosen by the Art Gallery staff who receive, unpack and hang the entries. This year’s winner is Victorian artist, Sean Layh, a first-time finalist in the Archibald Prize with his portrait of Australian actor Jacob Collins as Hamlet.
Beatrice Gralton, senior curator of contemporary Australian art and curator of Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026 exhibition, Art Gallery of NSW told LSJ Online, “From Marrickville to Mullumbimby artists from New South Wales are strongly represented in the 2026 Archibald Prize. The breadth and range of subjects they have chosen to paint are equally interdisciplinary and intergenerational, and range from actors and musicians, journalists and influencers to the highest public office in Australia, the Governor General.”
First awarded in 1921, the Archibald Prize is democratic in its accessibility. The open competition has been awarded annually (with two exceptions: 1964 and 1980) to the best portrait, ‘preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in arts, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia’. Entries to the Archibald Prize must be painted in the past year from at least one live sitting.
The Archibald Prize is a generous one, worth significantly more than the few hundred pounds it offered the winning artists in the early 1920s. Now, the Archies finalist will pocket $100,000 in prize money. The $50,000 Wynne Prize is awarded to the best landscape painting of Australian scenery or figurative sculpture, while the $40,000 Sulman Prize is given to the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project.
This year’s NSW finalists showcase a breadth of styles and subjects, but all have captured something candid and personal in their portraits of a person who holds meaning for that artist, and arguably, for the NSW and Australian communities. LSJ Online profiles six of the standout finalists from NSW in the running for this year’s Archibald Prize.
Sarah Satha
Shaun Christie-David runs a group of inner-west Sydney restaurants that train and employ asylum seekers. He also founded the charity meal delivery service Plate it Forward, which serves those in Sydney who struggle to access affordable, nutritious meals. He’s the subject of first-time Archibald finalist, Sydney artist Sarah Satha.
Satha says, “I have drawn elements from both Tamil and Christian iconography to convey Shaun’s great generosity of spirit. The scene is split between a street in Colombo, where his parents once lived, and Newtown, where he now lives and works.”
Satha’s oil paint on canvas portrait of Christie-David depicts the charity founder looking into the distance, dressed casually in rumpled jeans and sneakers. His left hand is casually tucked in a pocket of his jeans, while he seemingly has two right arms. One right hand is in his pocket, while the other gently grips the hand of a small boy, dressed in fading brown shirt, shorts and sneakers and school backpack. There is an ease between the two that might suggest the boy represents a younger Christie-David or exists as a figment of the imagination.
Loribelle Spirovski
Manila-born, Sydney-based artist Loribelle Spirovski’s quirky approach to portraiture depicts former Silverchair frontman, now solo artist, Daniel Johns, in fingerpainting on wood.
The two met in 2023 during the filming of Scott Hicks’ documentary “The musical mind: a portrait in progress”, in which both Spirovski and Johns featured.
She says, “This portrait was painted with my fingers. It is a method that allows me to work through chronic injury. But more than that, it connects me with my subject in a way that feels more vulnerable, more sincere and more human.”
This is Spirovski’s second run as both finalist and subject, having already won the Archibald Prize 2025 People’s Choice with a portrait of yidaki virtuoso William Barton, also painted with her fingers. She is the subject of a portrait by Tsering Hannaford in this year’s Archibald Prize.
James Powditch
Sydney artist James Powditch’s portrait of Sam Mostyn AO honours the second woman to hold the role of Governor-General of Australia. Mostyn is holding a sprig of palm inflorescence from the grounds of Admiralty House, a gift she’d brought to Powditch’s studio. It reveals a lighter, gentler side to a woman with a very serious role in giving Royal Assent to legislation and holding the power to dismiss a government. Powditch recognised Mostyn’s immense control over Australia’s Constitution in his entry, stating: “‘I was struck by her warmth and passion to bring a fresh, modern take to a role many view as purely ceremonial – to get out among the people, give voice to many causes, celebrate our triumphs, offer support in times of national trauma, and explain why our constitution has made us one of the most successful democracies in the world.”
Guy McEwan
A long-time volunteer at Sydney’s Wayside Chapel, Guy McEwan chose to capture Wayside’s CEO and pastor, Reverend Jon Owen in watercolour. “More than words” is McEwan’s first Archibald finalist.
The painting on draft paper is inspired by the look of a newspaper, honouring Owen’s online newsletter “The inner circle”. The newsletter is intended to present epistles in a style that is relatable and actionable rather than overtly religious or pious. In McEwan’s portrait, Owen’s face appears gentle fragmented into the gothic font of the newsletter, as if he is a creation of his own text, or that his existence is equal to his message in importance. There is a historic patina to the image that gives a sense of timelessness, quite removed from the hyper-modern, bold use of colour and shape in so many of the Archibald Prize finalists this year.
David Darcy
David Darcy works from his Murrurundi studio in the Upper Hunter region of NSW. He’s a three-time Archibald Finalist, having won the People’s Choice in 2019 with a portrait of Ngaanyatjarra Elder Daisy Tjuparntarri Ward. His portrait of Dale Frank depicts the abstract painter of five decades in front of a busy, heavily scrawled-upon blackboard. Frank’s elegantly groomed moustache and beard are somewhat incongruous with his dusty denim shirt and jeans. Behind one shoulder, the life-sized, chalk-drawn figure of an alien with huge, hollowed eyes seems to place its hand on Frank’s shoulder. It’s both creepy and playful in ode to Frank’s own psychedelic, surreal artworks.
Darcy said, “Dale Frank is an enigma; the elusive and mysterious unicorn of Australian art – a reclusive, defiant, brash, whisky-drinking, wisecracking, moustache-twirling virtuoso, with a reputation for being spontaneously indifferent, difficult and captivating all at the same time.”
Mitch Cairns
Sydney artist Mitch Cairns is no stranger to the Archibald Prize, having won it in 2017 for his portrait of his wife, fellow artist Agatha Gothe-Snape. His work has been bought and exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW, and his reputation for portraiture is internationally renowned.
This year, Cairns chose poet and author Gerald Murnane as his subject. Cairns said, “Alongside a small number of visual artists, Gerald Murnane’s writing continues to influence and sustain my art practice.”
He added, “In his writing, the navigation of images – held in his mind – creates pattern recognition, sequence and meaning, accounting for what he calls ‘true fiction’. Like Murnane, I have learned to ‘trust my obsessions’ and take comfort in my intuitive relationship to image-making.”
The Archibald Prize 2026 regional tour
The Archibald Prize 2026 regional tour will travel to one venue in Victoria and five venues across NSW, offering audiences outside Sydney the opportunity to see all the finalists in this year’s Archibald Prize.
Shepparton Art Museum 5 September – 1 November 2026
Bank Art Museum Moree 13 November – 19 December 2026
Griffith Regional Art Gallery 16 January – 28 February 2027
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery 13 March – 2 May 2027
Penrith Regional Gallery 15 May – 27 June 2027
Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre10 July – 22 August 2027
