The Laugh Out Loud Book Awards 2026 – About the Lollies

About the Lollies

The Laugh Out Loud Book Awards (the Lollies) celebrates the best and funniest children’s books in the UK and Ireland, voted for by children. The Awards have been running since 2016 and now we’re back for our tenth year!

What are the Lollies?

If you love to laugh, you’ll love the Lollies! They’re a book award searching for the very funniest children’s books published in the previous years. For 2026, we’re looking for books published in 2024 and 2025 in four different categories: Picture Books, Books for 6-8-year-olds, Books for 9-12-year-olds and Graphic Novels. Once the judges have decided on a shortlist, it’s all up to YOU! This is truly a children’s book award with the winner decided by children themselves.

How does it work?

Until February 9th 2026, publishers can submit the funniest books that they published in 2024 and 2025. We will then send all of these brilliant books to a panel of book industry experts so they can create a longlist of the top books, ready for our judges to read.
Our judges will then get ready to laugh their socks off with all the hilarious books on the Lollies longlist! Once they have read them all, we will invite them to decide on the final shortlist together. They will pick their top four in each category, giving us our shortlist.

Then it’s your turn to decide! We will then announce the shortlist and open the vote, giving you four choices per category. Once all the votes are in, we will count them up and then announce the winners – all decided by you!

When does this happen?

The shortlisted books, authors and illustrators will be announced in Spring 2026. Voting will open soon after and will close in Autumn 2026. We’ll announce the winners in December 2026.

Get in touch

If you’d like to know more about the Lollies, DM us on Instagram or X or email us at laughoutloud@scholastic.co.uk.