German artist Wolfgang Tillmans has won the 2026 Roswitha Haftmann Prize, Europe’s most financially significant arts prize, in recognition of his four-decade photography career and his longstanding social advocacy. The prize, administered by the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation, includes a no-strings-attached monetary award of 150,000 Swiss francs (about $190,000). The prize was established in 2001 and is named after the late Swiss dealer Roswitha Haftmann.
Tillmans, who is best known for his intimate photography of European subcultures, will receive the award in person during a ceremony at the Kunsthaus Zürich on September 17. Past winners of the prize include Cindy Sherman, Cecilia Vicuña, Sigmar Polke, Rosemarie Trockel, and Jeff Wall.
Tillmans was born in Remscheid, Germany and rose to prominence in the 1990s with his candid portraits of LGBTIQ+ youth and rave nightlife culture. Over the years, his practice expanded to include still lifes, astronomical imagery, camera-less photographic experiments, multi-media installations, sound works, and video. In a press statement, the foundation said the prize recognized Tillmans’s role in redefining photography through portraiture, abstraction, installation, publishing, and political engagement. Globally, the artist is co-represented by David Zwirner and London’s Maureen Paley. He is also represented by Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, and Galerie Buchholz in Berlin and Cologne.
“Wolfgang Tillmans is unquestionably one of the trailblazing artists of his generation in the field of photography internationally,” said Bernhart Schwenk, chief curator of contemporary art at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, who will present the award. “His artistic practice goes far beyond the purely aesthetic, harnessing public presence and language to foster a collective democratic consciousness founded on openness and solidarity.”
Tillmans is also a committed social activist. He has organized campaigns opposing Brexit and encouraging voter participation in German and European elections. In 2017, he established the nonprofit foundation, Between Bridges, to support democracy, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and anti-racism initiatives.
The artist’s recent exhibitions include the traveling survey “To Look Without Fear,” which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2022 before traveling to Toronto and San Francisco, as well as the 2025 exhibitions “Weltraum” at the Albertinum in Dresden and “Nothing could have prepared us–Everything could have prepared us” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
