On 1 April 2026, the London High Court dismissed the discontinued libel claim against British street artist Banksy. The Court held that the real purpose of that claim was not to restore reputational harm, but mainly to exert pressure on Banksy at the risk of revealing his identity, which would make Banksy consent to the commercial use of his artwork after all.
The proceedings were prompted by a clothing collection of GUESS that featured images of Banksy’s graffiti without Banksy’s consent. On Instagram, Banksy had lashed out to the brand: “Attention all shoplifters. Please go to GUESS on Regent Street. They’ve helped themselves to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?” However, GUESS kept selling the clothes and relied on a licence from Brandalised. Next, Brandalised argued that Banksy wrongly suggested in his post that his work had been licensed without consent, and brought a claim for libel.
This action was preceded by a long-term conflict about the commercial exploitation of Banksy’s artworks. Banksy opposed any such exploitation as a matter of principle and would not grant any licences. However, Brandalised was using his artworks anyway. They argued that they could license photographs of his graffiti because in their opinion, a separate copyright applied to those photographs, unrelated to the copyright to the actual graffiti works. At the same time Brandalised knew that Banksy considered the commercial use of this art an infringement of his copyright, but did not litigate against this for fear of losing his anonymity. In the libel case too, Brandalised used Banksy’s anonymity as a means of pressure. When the Court decided that Banksy could remain anonymous, Brandalised tried to conclude a commercial deal after all. When this attempt also failed, they withdrew the libel claim.
After this withdrawal, all that was left of the proceedings was Banksy’s request for compensation of his costs. In principle, he was already entitled to this compensation, but Banksy believed that there was an abuse of process. He therefore requested that the costs be awarded on an indemnity basis. This is a broader standard, by which any doubt about the reasonableness of the costs works out in Banksy’s favour. He also claimed a non-party cost order against director Andrew Gallagher personally.
The Court ruled that Brandalised had to compensate Banksy’s costs on an indemnity basis. According to the Court, the claim for libel had no real prospect of success from the beginning, because the post could probably be defended as an admissible value judgment. Against this background, rather than a serious attempt at rehabilitation, the legal action mostly seemed a way to deliberately put pressure on Banksy’s wish to remain anonymous in order to obtain consent for the commercial exploitation of his artwork after all. The Court denied the non-party cost order against Gallagher, since it considered the fact that Gallagher was in charge of the proceedings and deliberately exerted pressure insufficient justification.
Although Reuters recently claimed to have retrieved Banksy’s identity, in the eyes of the law he still remains the artist known as “Banksy”.