Literary prizes in 2025

All year round authors and illustrators from Flanders win literary prizes, both at home and abroad. Find out which authors, illustrators and translators have won prizes in 2025.

• What We Have Left by Aline Sax won De Boon for Children’s and Youth Literature 2025, the most prestigious Flemish prize for the best Dutch-language books. According to the jury: “Aline Sax offers a poignant impression of Berlin in the twilight of the Second World War, seen from the perspective of the defeated – a viewpoint rarely explored in youth literature. And what's more, it is written in free verse, a form that is quite unique in Dutch-language young adult fiction. This is a novel that does not shy away from brutality, yet resilience and an authentic voice take centre stage.”
• The Big Chicken Book by Evelien De Vlieger & Jan Hamstra received De Boon Readers' Prize for Children's and Youth Literature 2025.

• The German version of 'Weird Hair' by Nico Boon (translated by Christine Bais) was declared one of the three laureates of the 27th Dutch-German Children's and Youth Playwriting Prize, which is awarded annually during the KAAS&KAPPES festival.

• Gaea Schoeters received the Ultima for Literature 2024. "With the award, the jury honours an author whose work touches on important themes: from existential questions about life and death to current issues around inequality, identity and feminism. The jury also praises her exceptional versatility and deep commitment: there is always something at stake. Her literary work just gains strength through her commitment, which she consistently and fervently deploys on various cultural fronts."
• Marieke De Maré received the Confituur Bookstores' Prize 2025 with I’m Going to the Sheep. "This little gem is at once accessible and special, at once prose and poetry, at once down-to-earth and philosophical, at once text and white space, at once Flemish and universal."
• Tiemen Hiemstra won the Inktaap Prize 2025 with his debut novel W.. The winner of the Inktaap is selected by young people aged 15 to 18, who choose between three nominated titles that they have read, discussed, and judged. According to the jury: "We felt connected to the main character because he resembled us. (...) Of all three nominations, the theme in this story came closest to our lived world. And that made us want to read on."
• Aleksandr Skorobogatov received the KU Leuven honorary medal from the Faculty of Arts. It is an acknowledgement of his exceptional service to society: his sharp analyses of the Russian war approach and the Western indifference have received a lot of praise. “His prose is a unique illustration of the importance of translation in the circulation of literary texts, crossing the boundaries of cultures, countries and languages,” says professor Pieter Boulogne, one of the nominators of the honorary medal.

• Bart Moeyaert received the Henriëtte de Beaufort Prize 2025 for his autobiography ‘In Another Life’. The annual Flemish and Dutch prize is awarded to a biography written in Dutch, alternating between a Dutch and a Flemish author.
• 'The Lives of Claus' by Mark Schaevers received De Boon Readers' Prize for Fiction & Nonfiction 2025.
• Bart Van Loo received De Gouden Ganzenveer 2025, a cultural prize awarded annually to someone who has made a significant contribution to the Dutch written language or language culture. "Bart Van Loo has a varied body of work with his love for French cultural history in all its facets as a common thread. He receives De Gouden Ganzenveer 2025 for his detailed mining of history and the multifaceted and infectious way he conveys it to a very wide audience."

• ‘The Shame Species’ by Paul Demets won the Grand Poetry Prize 2025, one of the most prestigious poetry prizes in the Dutch-speaking world. "The collection strikes at the fragility of being human in relation to nature, to animals. The particularly poetic sense of nature of the late poet Guido Gezelle is rediscovered in ‘The Shame Species’. One could say that we undergo a pleasant (poetic) contamination, as it were."