FT names 2026 Business Book of the Year shortlist

In short: The Financial Times and Standard Chartered have announced six finalists for their 2026 Business Book of the Year Award, and half focus on artificial intelligence.

What happened

The Financial Times announced the shortlist for the FT and Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award 2026 on October 6. The winner will receive £30,000, and each shortlisted author will receive £10,000.

Three of the six shortlisted books are about AI, which is software that can learn patterns from data and produce results that look like human work (like a very fast assistant that has read a huge library). These books look at AI in three different ways, as a general tool for business, as a military technology, and as a way to make forecasts.

The shortlist also includes books on weight-loss drugs, the oil and gas industry, and a major economic downturn in the 1800s. Two former winners are on the list, Liaquat Ahamed (winner in 2009) and Sebastian Mallaby (winner in 2016).

The six finalists are: 1873 by Liaquat Ahamed, Off the Scales by Aimee Donnellan, The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby, Project Maven by Katrina Manson, Blood Will Flow by Alex Perry, and Prophecy by Carissa Véliz.

The award will be presented in London on December 2. It will be presented alongside the Bracken Prize for Young Authors.

Why it matters

Business book awards can be a clue to what leaders and investors are paying attention to. The FT noted that five of the last six winners have been books about technology, suggesting that AI and related tools are becoming a bigger part of everyday business decisions.

Source: Financial Times