Can Xue again leads Nobel literature odds before October 8 announcement

Chinese writer Can Xue again leads the odds-tracking site Nicer Odds' list of favourites for the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, with Japanese writer Haruki Murakami second, according to Jiemian, IT Home and Huxiu, all reporting the ranking as of October 6. The prize is due to be announced on October 8 at 13:00 Swedish time, Jiemian and IT Home said, which is 19:00 Beijing time; IT Home said this was the earliest possible announcement time. IT Home reported that Nicer Odds and the British bookmaker Ladbrokes both put Can Xue at 10/1 and Murakami at 14/1. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]

Jiemian and IT Home noted that Can Xue already topped the odds list in 2019, which drew wide discussion in Chinese media, and Jiemian said the discussion of her avant-garde, Kafka-style writing had since become more widely familiar. Jiemian, IT Home and Huxiu all cited an observed pattern since Olga Tokarczuk's 2018 win in which male and female laureates have alternated, which they said makes a female writer more likely this year. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]

The outlets treated the odds list as a reference rather than a rule. Jiemian and Huxiu said recent winners including Louise Glück, Annie Ernaux, Jon Fosse and last year's winner László Krasznahorkai had appeared near the top of odds lists, while Abdulrazak Gurnah and Han Kang had not. Jiemian quoted Literary Hub executive editor Emily Temple as writing that the odds for Murakami, Thomas Pynchon and Margaret Atwood are “too high” and that they “will never win”, and said relative movement on the list matters more than absolute position. [ 1 , 3 ]

Jiemian reported that the last Spanish-language winner was Mario Vargas Llosa in 2010, and named Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza and Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas as candidates now ranked third and fourth; it said Vila-Matas told El Mundo he had once received a call from a Swedish institution resembling the Nobel notification call. Other names cited across Jiemian and Huxiu include Australian writers Gerald Murnane and Alexis Wright, Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu, Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge, Indian writers Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy, North American writers Anne Carson and Joyce Carol Oates, Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou and Greek writer Ersi Sotiropoulos. Jiemian also noted that US singer Paul Simon appeared on the list. [ 1 , 3 ]

IT Home gave background on Can Xue, whose real name is Deng Xiaohua. It said she was born in Changsha in 1953, left school after primary education and became a writer through self-study, is known for works including “The Hut on the Mountain”, “Yellow Mud Street”, “Old Floating Cloud” and “Five Spice Street”, and has been called “China's Kafka” and, by US writer Susan Sontag, “China's best writer”. It said her work has been translated into multiple languages and used in courses at Harvard and Columbia, and that her dense, dreamlike style is less widely known among general readers in China. IT Home also reported that a Weibo hashtag about Can Xue leading the Nobel odds reached 16th on the hot search list with a heat value of 289,951. [ 2 ]