[3] The Lindgren Award annually recognises one or more living people and extant institutions (twelve in the first ten years) – people for their career contributions and institutions for their long-term sustainable work.
Specifically they should be "authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and promoters of reading" whose "work is of the highest quality, and in the spirit of Astrid Lindgren.
The award is administered by the Swedish Arts Council funded solely by the central government.
The 12 members include authors, literary critics and scholars, illustrators and librarians.
[4][8] Five of the Lindgren Award winners have also, and much earlier, won the older, international Hans Christian Andersen Award for their lifetime contributions to children's literature: Sendak and Erlbruch as illustrators; Nöstlinger, Nunes, and Paterson as authors.