Michael Zavros has won the 2026 Archibald Prize People's Choice award for his portrait of Alex Ryvchin, a leader of Australia's Jewish community. The painting, called Alex with his tefillin in the sea, received 45,769 public votes — the most ever in the award's history (The Guardian).

The People's Choice is a $5,000 award decided by everyday visitors who vote for their favourite painting. It is separate from the main Archibald Prize, which is chosen by judges. This year the main prize, worth $100,000, went to Richard Lewer for his portrait of artist Iluwanti Ken. Another award, the packing room prize — picked by the staff who physically handle the paintings — went to Sean Layh for his portrait of actor Jacob Collins and is worth $3,000. A separate $50,000 prize called the Wynne Prize, for landscape painting, was won by Gaypalani Waṉambi for her painting The Waṉambi tree (The Guardian).

The portrait shows Ryvchin wearing tefillin — small black leather boxes with straps that contain scrolls with verses from the Torah, worn by Jewish men during morning prayer. He is shown against a seascape. Zavros and Ryvchin met in early January at a beach in Sydney's east, weeks after the Bondi terror attack, and the painting was created after that meeting (The Guardian).

Ryvchin came to Australia from Ukraine as a four-year-old refugee in the 1980s and is also an author (The Guardian; ABC News). Zavros, a Queensland-based artist, found out through a DNA test that he has Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, along with Greek and Irish ancestry. His family moved to Australia from Cyprus in the 1950s (The Guardian; The Australian).

The Archibald Prize is now in its 105th year. It goes to the best portrait of a well-known person in art, science, politics, or literature, painted by someone who lives in Australia. The 2026 exhibition runs from May 9 to August 16 at the Art Gallery of NSW (The Guardian; ABC News).

The vote total for Zavros's painting is higher than any recent People's Choice winner. Last year, Julie Fragar won the 2025 People's Choice for a portrait of William Barton (Art Gallery of NSW). In 2019, David Darcy won the People's Choice with a portrait of a Ngaanyatjarra Elder; Darcy is a finalist again in 2026, his third time in the prize (Art Gallery of NSW).

The broader context here helps explain why this painting drew so much attention. It was painted weeks after the Bondi terror attack, and its subject is a prominent leader of Australia's Jewish community. The People's Choice award measures what the public feels, not what art experts judge. So a record number of votes for a painting of a Jewish leader wearing tefillin in the ocean carries a meaning that goes beyond the painting itself. The fact that Zavros recently discovered his own Jewish heritage through a DNA test adds a personal layer to the story.

The split between the People's Choice and the main prize is also worth understanding. The $100,000 main prize went to a portrait of Iluwanti Ken, an Indigenous artist; the $50,000 Wynne Prize went to Gaypalani Waṉambi. Indigenous art and Jewish community representation both featured prominently across the 2026 prizes, though through different awards and judging processes. The packing room prize went to a portrait of actor Jacob Collins by Sean Layh, continuing that award's pattern of choosing subjects from the performing arts.

The exhibition runs through August 16, so the public can still see the finalists' work at the Art Gallery of NSW. The record number of votes in the People's Choice suggests an unusually high level of public interest in this year's paintings.