studio © Alexander Koch. Courtesy of the artist.
Royal College of Art graduate Alexander Koch has won the 2026 ACS Studio Prize, receiving £6,000 towards the cost of an artist’s studio in a UK city of his choice.
The Artists’ Collecting Society (ACS) has named London-based painter Alexander Koch the winner of its 2026 Studio Prize, selected from five finalists by a judging panel including David Dawson, Sir Gabriele Finaldi, Philip Mould OBE and Viscountess Bridgeman CBE.
Founded in 2017 and now celebrating its tenth edition, the ACS Studio Prize is aimed at students and recent graduates at a point when finding and paying for a studio can be one of the biggest obstacles to continuing an artistic practice.
Alongside the £6,000 towards studio costs, Koch will have the opportunity to take part in a group exhibition at Gurr Johns.
Koch is an Italian-Dutch visual artist based in London. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague before completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. He is also a previous recipient of the Jan Roede Award.
His paintings bring together memory, dreams and speculative ideas, moving between past and imagined futures to create scenes that sit somewhere less easily defined in the present.
“Through engaging with painting, I try to use memory (the past), dreams and ideas (the future) in order to activate something in the present,”
Koch says.
“Searching for a personal truth, something honest.”
For Koch, that exploration also extends beyond the image itself to how a painting is physically made and encountered.
“I believe painting is more than just a picture,” he says, pointing to the potential of paint, construction, priming and different methods of displaying work to create the conditions in which its stories can be told.
This year’s other finalists were Benjamin Blanc, Rachel Coyne, Bunny Hennessey and Samah Rafiq. Their work is currently being shown alongside Koch’s at Gurr Johns’ St James’s gallery until Thursday 24th September. Each runner-up also receives a £100 Cass Art voucher.
The prize has built up an interesting record of supporting artists early in their careers. Previous winners include Marco Miehling, Rebecca Harper, Araminta Blue, Dion Kitson, Dorcas Casey, David Gardner, Clara Hastrup, Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia and Georgia Dymock.
ACS says it has reinvested close to £250,000 in educational bursaries and prizes at universities and charitable institutions across the UK since 2012.
For Koch, the immediate result is considerably more tangible: £6,000 towards having somewhere to make the next body of work.
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