German Book Prize 2025: discover the shortlist – experience the award ceremony

Which of the six shortlisted titles will be crowned German-language novel of the year? The jury’s decision will be announced on Monday. Those who wish to experience the award ceremony at the Frankfurt Römer can watch the livestream at www.deutscher-buchpreis.de on 13 October 2025 from 6 p.m. In addition, this year, the event will once again be streamed with German Sign Language interpretation at https://www.deutscher-buchpreis.de/livestream-dgs/.

At the same time, the radio stations Deutschlandfunk and Deutschlandfunk Kultur will broadcast the event live on the special digital radio channel “Dokumente und Debatten” and stream it on www.deutschlandradio.de/debatten. The livestream of the award ceremony will also be available on the Frankfurter Buchmesse website: www.buchmesse.de.

Get to know the finalists

Readers are invited to discover the selected novels in the following ways.

Short films introducing the shortlisted authors and their titles will be available shortly on the German Book Prize website: https://www.deutscher-buchpreis.de/videos.

English translations of excerpts from the shortlisted titles and an English-language dossier on the shortlist will be presented on the internet portal www.new-books-in-german.com.

With the German Book Prize, the Stiftung Buchkultur und Leseförderung des Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels (Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association) honours the best German-language novel of the year. Deutsche Bank Stiftung (Deutsche Bank Foundation) is the main sponsor of the award, and other partners include Frankfurter Buchmesse and the city of Frankfurt am Main.

The hashtag for the German Book Prize 2025 is #dbp25.