Rochdale-based artist Alina Akbar named as winner of The Football Art Prize
The Football Art Prize has announced the winners of its 2025/25 edition as the FIFA World Cup continues. The Football Art Prize is run by Touchstones with Parker Harris, and invites artists to explore the passion, drama, and unity that football inspires across the world through a variety of artforms.
Alina Akbar is a Rochdale-based multidisciplinary artist who has previously worked with Touchstones on Jasleen Kaur’s exhibition Gut Feelings, Meri Jaan; and has recently hosted a solo exhibition with Culture Co-op at Haji Cash & Carry warehouse. She has been awarded the first prize of £5,000 for her film Footwork, which brings together football freestyle and khatak dance to explore the footwork of both artforms with people from the British South Asian diaspora.
Akbar said: “Football is not often seen as art. It’s seen as just fan culture. I think it’s so important that all these artists creating work to do with football are seen and taken seriously in their artforms.”
Conor Rogers, a Sheffield-based painter, has been awarded the second prize of £2,000 for his ongoing series Betting Slip. Rogers learned to draw by sketching punters in local bookies and working men’s clubs, and his Betting Slip series – four of which feature in The Football Art Prize exhibition – sees work painted directly onto found betting slips and football accumulators.
The prize-giving ceremony took pace at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield in June, where the exhibition of all selected work from over 60 artists is on display until 13 September. The exhibition then travels to the National Football Museum in Manchester from November 2026 to February 2027.
Millennium Gallery, SheffieldStill from Alina Akbar’s Footwork
You’ve never won a thing’ (Diptych), Conor Rogers
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