So there we have it, folks. Everyone's filed out of the Royal Festival Hall, the autograph hunters have abandoned their posts outside the BFI Southbank, our 7am coffee-fuelled pilgrimages to Picturehouse Central are over, and just like that, the 70th BFI London Film Festival has come to an end. And while we've already picked our favourites from this year's fest and continue to ride the buzz of watching Paul Bettany tackle the steps at the BFI IMAX for our special presentation of VisionQuest, the official competition winners at 2026's LFF has now been officially unveiled. Let's get into it, shall we?
Presided over by jury presidents Sam Pollard (Official Competition), Amir El-Masry (First Feature Competition), Sandhya Suri (Documentary Competition) and Helen Simmons (Short Film Competition), this year's LFF Competition strands were about as hard-contested as they've ever been, with the winners speaking to the breadth and depth of cinematic discoveries at this year's festival. 2026's Official Competition winner was Sergei Loznitsa's Imperium, a sweeping excavation of the social and cultural landscape of 70s Soviet Union. On the First Feature front, Southeast Asian filmmaker Sompot Chidgasornpongse's spiritual and visually striking Thai pilgrimage movie 9 Temples to Heaven took home the top honour, with British filmmaker Bertil Nilsson's queer character study Masc coming in for a special mention from the jury.
Elsewhere, the Grierson Award for the best documentary at the London Film Festival went to the richly deserving Concrete Land, Asmahan Bkerat's sensitively handled, intimate portrait of a Jordanian family facing — and fighting — erasure and displacement within their home country. And last but by absolutely no means least, this year's Short Film Award went to Rahul Roye's tremendous Aman. Available to watch for free on the BFI Player, Roye's 16-minute movie follows a trans man forced to wrestle with notions of masculinity and fatherhood when he discovers he is pregnant the night before gender-affirming surgery.
Now, this isn't quite the full list of winners at this year's LFF, as LFF Audience Awards voting is still open until Wednesday 21 October (tomorrow!) — and so Best Feature Film and Best British Discovery will be announced in due course and then updated here. But even so, it's safe to say the 70th BFI London Film Festival has been yet another inspiring and eye-opening celebration of cinema in all its forms. Here's to the next 70 years!