Michael Zavros has won the 2026 Archibald Prize People's Choice award for his portrait of Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The work, officially titled Alex with his tefillin in the sea, received 45,769 public votes — the highest number ever recorded in the prize's history (The Guardian).

The People's Choice award carries a $5,000 prize and is decided by public vote, making it separate from the main Archibald Prize. This year the main prize, worth $100,000, went to Richard Lewer for his portrait of artist Iluwanti Ken. The Archibald packing room prize — selected by the gallery's handling staff and worth $3,000 — was awarded to Sean Layh for his portrait of actor Jacob Collins. The $50,000 Wynne Prize, a companion award for landscape painting or figurative sculpture, 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 containing scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah, worn by Jewish men during weekday morning prayer — set 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 work was created following that encounter (The Guardian).

Ryvchin arrived in 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, discovered through a DNA test that he has Ashkenazi Jewish heritage alongside Greek and Irish ancestry. His family immigrated to Australia from Cyprus in the 1950s (The Guardian; The Australian).

The Archibald Prize, now in its 105th year, is awarded to the best portrait of a person distinguished in art, letters, science, or politics, painted by an Australian resident. The 2026 exhibition runs from May 9 to August 16 at the Art Gallery of NSW (The Guardian; ABC News).

The record vote total places Zavros's portrait ahead of recent People's Choice winners. Last year, Julie Fragar won the 2025 ANZ People's Choice award for a portrait of William Barton (Art Gallery of NSW). In 2019, David Darcy took the People's Choice with a portrait of a Ngaanyatjarra Elder; Darcy is again a finalist in 2026, his third appearance in the prize (Art Gallery of NSW).

The broader context here matters. The portrait's genesis, weeks after the Bondi terror attack, and its subject, a prominent leader of Australian Jewry, sit at the intersection of portraiture and public commemoration. The Archibald People's Choice is, by design, a measure of public sentiment rather than curatorial judgment; a record-breaking vote for a portrait of a Jewish communal figure in tefillin, set in the ocean, carries a resonance that extends beyond the aesthetic. That the artist himself recently discovered Ashkenazi Jewish heritage through a DNA test adds a layer of personal discovery to the public act of portrayal.

The distinction between the People's Choice and the main prize is worth noting for those who track the Archibald ecosystem. The $100,000 main prize went to Lewer's portrait of Iluwanti Ken, an Indigenous artist; the $50,000 Wynne Prize went to Gaypalani Waṉambi. Indigenous art and Jewish communal representation thus both featured prominently across the 2026 prize categories, though through separate awards and selection mechanisms. The packing room prize, selected by the gallery's handling staff, went to a portrait of actor Jacob Collins by Sean Layh, continuing that award's tendency toward subjects from the performing arts.

With the exhibition running through August 16, the public continues to have the opportunity to engage with the finalists' work at the Art Gallery of NSW. The record participation in the People's Choice vote suggests an unusually high level of public engagement with this year's field.