2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Awards: Lee-Ché Janecke, Jason Jacobs Among Winners

Five South African artists have been named as this year’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners, chosen across dance, theatre, visual arts, jazz, and music. The awards, now running for over four decades and having recognised upwards of 180 artists, sit among the most-anticipated accolades on the local arts calendar.

2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winners Are: 

Dance: Lee-ché Janecke

If you’ve seen Tyla perform “Water,” you’ve already encountered Lee-ché Janecke’s work, even if you didn’t know his name. The Bonteheuwel-born choreographer, who performs and works under the name Litchi HOV, created that globally recognised movement and went on to choreograph Tyla’s “Push 2 Start” video, earning a nomination at the MTV Video Music Awards in the process.

Lee-ché didn’t come up through formal dance conservatories. His practice lives in popular culture, the music industry, stadium stages, and the digital spaces where choreography now spreads faster than any theatre programme could allow. That reach is precisely what makes his recognition by the awards so significant. Last year, he was honoured as Role Model of the Year at the Feather Awards. This one adds to a growing list.

Theatre: Jason Jacobs

Jason Jacobs is from Kharkams in the Northern Cape and draws from his Nama-Khoi indigenous heritage in work that moves between theatre and film. He was the 2017 Kunste Onbeperk honouree in theatre and the recipient of the TAAC Emerging Theatre Director’s Bursary. He served as dialogue coach and casting director on kykNET’s Suidooster and debuted as a filmmaker and screenplay writer at the Silwerskermfees with Nama Swaan in 2018. Jason’s work sits at the intersection of personal history and First Nations storytelling, recovering and articulating stories that have long been underrepresented in South Africa’s cultural spaces.

Visual Arts: Bronwyn Katz

Bronwyn Katz works in sculpture and installation, using material, gesture, and sound to explore how communal memory survives outside of formal archives. Her practice engages with land and embodied knowledge, asking how histories that resist documentation can still be transmitted across generations. The work is speculative in its approach, proposing alternative frameworks for recording what official histories tend to overlook.

Jazz: Gabi Motuba

Gabi Motuba is a vocalist, composer, and educator whose work moves across avant-garde experimentation and philosophical inquiry. She has built an expansive body of recordings and performances over the years, while her role as an educator means her influence runs through South Africa’s broader musical ecosystem as well.

Music: Ndumiso Manana

Ndumiso Manana is a singer, songwriter, and producer whose work draws from R&B, electronic music, Afrobeats, and acoustic traditions. He moves across those genres with ease, which reflects a wider pattern among South African musicians who are no longer tethered to a single sound or audience.

Each of these five artists will perform at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda, running from 25 June to 5 July 2026.

Source: Bizcommunity

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