The National Arts Festival and Standard Bank have unveiled their 2026 cohort of Standard Bank Young Artist Award (SBYA) winners, and the group makes it clear that South African art is shaking off its old skin.
This year’s recipients were announced as: Bronwyn Katz (Visual Arts), Gabi Motuba (Jazz), Jason Jacobs (Theatre), Lee-ché Janecke (Dance), and Ndumiso Manana (Music). These recipients are bending genres, dodging categories, and proving that the most exciting work happens when you refuse to pick a lane.
“We’re seeing artists who move fluidly between the archive, the stage and the global screen,” said National Arts Festival CEO Monica Newton. “This year’s recipients arrive with something to say, and the award gives them the platform to say it louder.”
From the township to TikTok to the world
Better known as Litchi HOV, Lee-ché Janecke, didn’t come up through ballet barres or contemporary conservatories. His language is popular choreography, global performance culture, and the kind of movement that travels across TikTok, stadium stages, and international collaborations with major music acts.
Then there’s Ndumiso Manana, a singer, songwriter and producer who refuses to be pinned down. His music slides between R&B, electronic, Afrobeats and acoustic traditions introspective lyrics meeting expansive sonic experimentation. He represents a generation of South African musicians who are equally at home in local taxi ranks and global playlists.
Art that remembers
This cohort is deeply attentive to history, place and community.
Bronwyn Katz works with sculpture and installation to ask an urgent question: how do you record memory when traditional archives weren’t built for your stories? Her speculative practice draws on land, embodied knowledge, and even sound to carry histories that resist conventional documentation.
Jason Jacobs, receiving the theatre award, pulls from his Nama-Khoi indigenous heritage. Working across theatre and film, he brings lived First Nations histories into contemporary narratives vital work in a country still grappling with whose stories get told.
And in jazz, Gabi Motuba has built a career as a vocalist, composer and educator who treats sound as both intellectual investigation and spiritual discipline. Her work puts music in conversation with literature, history and political thought. This isn’t background music; it’s philosophy with a backbeat.
More than a trophy
For over four decades, the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards have launched more than 180 creatives who went on to reshape their fields. But the 2026 recipients won’t just get a certificate and a handshake.
Each will develop new work that premieres at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda from June 25 to July 5 2026. The full festival programme drops on May 12.
Standard Bank’s group head of sponsorship, Bonga Sebesho, puts it simply: “Artists help us interpret the present while imagining the future.”
Newton is more direct: “South Africa has no shortage of brilliant young artists. What we need is more pathways that actually accelerate their careers, and that’s exactly what this partnership delivers.”
- The 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners include Bronwyn Katz (Visual Arts), Gabi Motuba (Jazz), Jason Jacobs (Theatre), Lee-ché Janecke (Dance), and Ndumiso Manana (Music), representing a new wave of South African artists blending genres and defying categories.
- Awardees like Lee-ché Janecke and Ndumiso Manana bring contemporary, global influences such as TikTok choreography and genre-blurring music, connecting local roots to international platforms.
- The cohort emphasizes history, community, and indigenous heritage, with works exploring memory, First Nations stories, and jazz as a form of intellectual and spiritual engagement.
- The award includes the creation and premiere of new work at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda from June 25 to July 5, 2026, providing more than just recognition but career-accelerating opportunities.
- Organizers highlight the importance of supporting young artists as vital interpreters of the present and visionaries of the future, aiming to create robust pathways to advance their artistic careers.
"We're seeing artists who move fluidly between the archive, the stage and the global screen," said National Arts Festival CEO Monica Newton. "
Better known as Litchi HOV, Lee-ché Janecke, didn't come up through ballet barres or contemporary conservatories. His language is popular choreography, global performance culture, and the kind of movement that travels across TikTok, stadium stages, and international collaborations with major music acts.
Bronwyn Katz works with sculpture and installation to ask an urgent question: how do you record memory when traditional archives weren't built for your stories? Her speculative practice draws on land, embodied knowledge, and even sound to carry histories that resist conventional documentation.
Jason Jacobs, receiving the theatre award, pulls from his Nama-
For over four decades, the
Each will develop new work that premieres at the National Arts Festival in
Newton is more direct: "
