The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2026 class of fellows on Tuesday, selecting 20 individuals recognized for their exceptional creativity across disciplines ranging from the performing arts to the social sciences. Each fellow will receive $800,000 over five years through the foundation’s no-strings-attached awards, commonly known as “genius grants,” designed to provide recipients with the freedom to pursue their work.
The diverse cohort spans four decades in age and represents three continents. The class includes a philosopher exploring the interplay between memory and forgiveness through cognitive science, a poet engaging with colonial history and Native American resilience, and a choreographer blending dance traditions from different cultures and time periods. The foundation highlighted the fellows’ work as expanding scientific inquiry, revealing historical perspectives, and deepening the understanding of human experience.
At 29, Brooklyn-based saxophonist, bandleader and composer Immanuel Wilkins is the youngest recipient. Wilkins’s debut album, “Omega,” draws a musical connection between the 1918 lynching of Mary Turner, a pregnant Black woman, and the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager. Wilkins emphasized that music’s abstraction allows him to address these traumatic histories without directly recreating their violence. He is also investigating how jazz’s distinctive rhythms and “swing” can be expressed through alternative visual formats such as sculpture or graphic scores, challenging the limitations of Western musical notation in capturing the essence of Black music.
Ellora Derenoncourt, an associate professor of economics at Princeton University, intends to use the award to amplify research on economic justice to a broader audience, including policymakers. Her work examines racial wealth disparities, tracing their roots in history and identifying key policy moments that have influenced economic inequality. She highlighted concerns about diminishing data availability on workforce demographics under recent U.S. government policies and underscored the importance of maintaining robust research to understand and address ongoing racial inequalities.
Painter Vincent Valdez, known for exploring American identity through large-scale representational works, noted the MacArthur award’s legacy of supporting artists who push boundaries. Valdez’s paintings often address social and cultural memory, including murals important to Mexican American communities. His recent projects confront issues such as racial violence and community displacement, with images ranging from depictions of modern Ku Klux Klan members to portraits of overlooked societal figures. Drawing connections to collective experiences in sports fandom, Valdez expressed hope for unified social action to address pressing societal challenges.
The MacArthur Fellowships are unique in that recipients are not required to submit applications or progress reports; nominations come from a confidential network of external experts, and final selections are made by an independent committee. The foundation describes the awards as a flexible investment in the recipients’ potential to shape their fields and society in innovative ways. Fellow reactions reflected both surprise at the unexpected recognition and an eagerness to leverage the support in advancing their diverse creative and scholarly goals.