The 2026 Ibsen Prize went to Linda Gathu

The national Ibsen Prize is Norway's only playwright's prize, and has been awarded by the Municipality of Skien since 1986. The prize is awarded annually to a dramatic text that has had its world premiere or Norwegian premiere at a professional Norwegian theater - or in another professional and artistic context - during the previous calendar year.

The prize consists of 150,000 kroner and a statuette designed by sculptor Nina Sundbye.

Party night in Skien

The Ibsen Prize was awarded for the thirtieth time during a gala evening at Ibsenhuset in Skien on March 20th.

The three nominees were

• Kjersti Haugen – nominated for Stille inn, which premiered at Teater Innlandet on January 23, 2025.
• Tore Vagn Lid – nominated for Triggersystemet, which premiered on June 21, 2025 at the Northern Norway Festival.
• Linda Gathu – nominated for Sugar, which premiered at Det Norske Teatret on June 10, 2025.

Haugen, Lid and Gathu were all present during the party. The evening's hosts were Charlotte Frogner and Dennis Storhøi.

The jury's reasoning

The sins of the colonial era haunt the scenes as a modern art museum attempts to build a more progressive image.

Linda Gathu's Sukker cleverly and humorously shows how self-interest can be camouflaged as morality in a self-righteous zeitgeist. Through solid textual work, written with energy and power, Gathu has created a dense web of different timelines, where an artist is thrown onto a surprising journey in the fight for his artistic integrity. The text is playful, surprising, knowledgeable and funny, while at the same time being grounded in a touching seriousness. Linda Gathu succeeds in treating current social themes such as representation and racism in an undogmatic way and on the text's own, liberating premises.

Sugar is a sharp critique of institutions, while at the same time demonstrating the art and theatre's ability to both make conventions visible and to break out of them. Linda Gathu has written a work that is deeply rooted in our time – and at the same time points further. It is intelligent, fearless and theatrically potent drama.

The jury consisted of:

• The Directors' Association – Simone Thiis (chair)
• Norwegian Theatre Directors Forum – Hege Aga Edelsteen (Ketil Kolstad)
• Norwegian Dramatists – Kristoffer Spender
• The Norwegian Playwrights' Association – Kristin Bjørn
• Skien Municipality at the Ibsen Theatre – Åste Marie Bjerke

About the award winner

Linda Gathu is a trained actor from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and has an MA in theatre from the Norwegian Academy of Theatre Arts, KHiO, in Oslo.

Gathu was also the resident playwright at Dramatikkens Hus in 2022-2023.

Her first stage play, Windhoek, won “New Voices”, a competition at the National Theatre.

White Noise was written for Cornerstone in collaboration with Døgnfluer (2021). Sugar is her first full-length theatre text, and is part of a trilogy of stand-alone stories rooted in different times, all with the Danish-Norwegian colonial history as a backdrop.