Alix E. Harrow’s The Everlasting is officially the winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
The award was presented on August 30 during LAcon V, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention. The official Hugo Awards results named Harrow’s novel the winner over a six-book field that included works from Robert Jackson Bennett, Nnedi Okorafor, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emily Tesh and Antonia Hodgson.
Published by Tor Books in October 2025, The Everlasting is a standalone fantasy novel about a legendary lady knight, the historian obsessed with her story and the political power of turning real people into national myths.
For anyone discovering the book through its Hugo win, here is everything you need to know without major spoilers.
How The Everlasting Won the 2026 Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are selected by members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention rather than a small judging panel. Members nominate eligible work and then rank the finalists on the final ballot.
According to the complete 2026 voting statistics, 2,003 votes were cast in the Best Novel category. The Everlasting received 472 first-preference votes, the most of any finalist, and remained in first place through every round of counting.
The final Best Novel ranking was:
| Rank | Novel | Author |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow |
| 2 | The Incandescent | Emily Tesh |
| 3 | A Drop of Corruption | Robert Jackson Bennett |
| 4 | The Raven Scholar | Antonia Hodgson |
| 5 | Death of the Author | Nnedi Okorafor |
| 6 | Shroud | Adrian Tchaikovsky |
The win gives Harrow her second Hugo Award and her first in the Best Novel category. She previously won Best Short Story in 2019 for “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies.” Her debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, was also a Best Novel finalist in 2020.
What Kind of Fantasy Book Is It?
The Everlasting combines a time loop, medieval legend, political fantasy and a central love story. Its lady knight and national mythology draw heavily from Arthurian tradition, but Dominion itself belongs to an original secondary world rather than a reworked version of Britain.
The story moves between different periods in Dominion’s history, including an industrialized era shaped by war and the earlier age in which Una’s legend began. The time travel is tied directly to the structure of the book, allowing readers to see how a complicated life becomes a much cleaner piece of propaganda centuries later.
The romance between Una and Owen is essential to the story, but this is closer to literary romantic fantasy than a conventional, trope-driven romantasy novel. Readers looking for knights, yearning and a major romance will find all three, but the book spends just as much time on war, history, nationalism and the stories countries tell about themselves.
Harrow described that purpose directly in a 2026 interview about the novel:
“I wanted a way to explore the way that I think heroes and folklore are made into tools for empire-building, for nation-building.”
That idea runs through the entire premise. Una is celebrated as an immortal symbol because the rougher and less useful parts of her life have been removed. Owen’s work as a historian forces him to confront the distance between recorded history, popular memory and the truth.
Netflix Is Developing a Television Adaptation
The Everlasting may also be headed to television.
Netflix won the rights to the book and is developing it as a series. According to Variety, Daphne Ferraro is attached to write the adaptation and executive produce alongside Harrow, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Katy Rozelle and Lea Cuello.
Ferraro previously worked as the head writer on Maxton Hall and is also attached to Amazon MGM’s adaptation of Lauren Roberts’ Powerless.
The project is still in development. Netflix has not ordered a full series, and no cast or expected release date has been announced.
Should You Read The Everlasting?
The Everlasting is likely to work best for readers who enjoy mythic fantasy, time-loop stories, tragic romance and books that question the heroic histories their worlds are built upon.
It is less likely to suit someone looking primarily for a fast, battle-heavy epic or a light romance built around familiar tropes. The book has knights and war, but its real interest lies in memory, love and the way power reshapes stories until the official version is almost impossible to separate from the truth.
The entire story is contained in one relatively short novel, and the opening chapters are available through an official extended preview from Reactor.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
