The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1956.

• Public Service:
  • Watsonville Register-Pajaronian for courageous exposure of corruption in public office, which led to the resignation of a district attorney and the conviction of one of his associates.
• Local Reporting, Edition Time:
  • Lee Hills of the Detroit Free Press for his aggressive, resourceful and comprehensive front page reporting of the United Auto Workers' negotiations with Ford and General Motors for a guaranteed annual wage.^[1][2]
• Local Reporting, No Edition Time:
  • Arthur Daley of The New York Times, for his outstanding coverage and commentary on the world of sports in his daily column, Sports of the Times.
• National Reporting:
  • Charles L. Bartlett of the Chattanooga Times, for his original disclosures that led to the resignation of Harold E. Talbott as Secretary of the Air Force.^[3]
• International Reporting:
  • William Randolph Hearst, Jr., J. Kingsbury-Smith, and Frank Conniff of the International News Service, for a series of exclusive interviews with the leaders of the Soviet Union.
• Editorial Writing:
  • Lauren K. Soth of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, for "If the Russians Want More Meat...", inviting a farm delegation from the Soviet Union to visit Iowa, which led directly to the Russian farm visit to the U.S.^[4]
• Editorial Cartooning:
  • Robert York of The Louisville Times, for his cartoon, "Achilles", showing a bulging figure of American prosperity tapering to a weak heel labeled "Farm Prices".
• Photography:
  • Staff of the New York Daily News, for its consistently excellent news picture coverage in 1955, an outstanding example of which is its photo, "Bomber Crashes in Street".

• Fiction:
  • Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (World).
• Drama:
  • Diary of Anne Frank by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (Random).
• History:
  • The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter (Knopf).
• Biography or Autobiography:
  • Benjamin Henry Latrobe by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin (Oxford Univ. Press)
• Poetry:
  • Poems - North & South by Elizabeth Bishop (Houghton).
• Music:
  • Symphony No. 3 by Ernst Toch (Mills), first performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, December 2, 1955.