BBC Young Musician

BBC Young Musician is a televised national music competition broadcast biennially on BBC Television and BBC Radio 3. Originally BBC Young Musician of the Year, its name was changed in 2010.

The competition, a former member of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY), is open to UK-resident percussion, keyboard, string, brass and woodwind players, who are eighteen years of age or under on 1 January in the relevant year.

The competition was established in 1978 by Humphrey Burton, Walter Todds and Roy Tipping, former members of the BBC Television Music Department. Michael Hext, a trombonist, was the inaugural winner. In 1994, the percussion category was added, alongside the existing keyboard, string, brass and woodwind categories. The competition has five stages: regional auditions, category auditions, category finals, semi-finals and the final. The biennial competition is managed and produced by BBC Cymru Wales.

To date, there have been 22 winners, the youngest being 12-year-old Peter Moore. In 2014, the BBC Young Musician Jazz Award was introduced; Alexander Bone, a saxophonist, was the inaugural winner.

As a result of the success of the competition, the Eurovision Young Musicians competition was initiated in 1982. The first edition was broadcast live from Manchester's Free Trade Hall. The presenter was Humphrey Burton and the producer was Roy Tipping. The winner of BBC Young Musician often went on to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Young Musicians.

For the tenth edition of the competition in 1996, a series of recitals given by past finalists were broadcast on BBC Two in a late-night timeslot. The competition celebrated its 30th anniversary in May 2008 with a documentary narrated by Gethin Jones on BBC Two and with former participants speaking to 2006 winner Mark Simpson for Young Musicians Grown Old on BBC Radio 4. BBC Four's documentary BBC Young Musician: Forty Years Young was aired on 3 April 2018. To celebrate the 40th anniversary, the first BBC Young Musician Prom was held at the Royal Albert Hall and broadcast live on 15 July 2018. Presented by Clemency Burton-Hill, the concert featured performances from past winners and finalists alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Andrew Gourlay.

The 2020 competition was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, after proceeding as normal up to and including the filming of the semi-final. The five category finals were broadcast in May and June 2020, with broadcast of the semi-final and recording of the final postponed, at first until the autumn, and then into 2021. The Jazz Award final was broadcast as planned on 22 November 2020, having been recorded at Cadogan Hall in the absence of an audience. The grand final was recorded in April 2021 – also without an audience – and broadcast on 2 May, preceded on 30 April by the delayed broadcast of the semi-final.

The 2022 competition was deferred from spring to early autumn and was broadcast in October; the semi-final stage of the competition (introduced in 2010) was discontinued for that year. For the 2024 competition, a new format was introduced: category finals were replaced by two quarter-finals each featuring six musicians. A total of six musicians progress to the semi-final, and then three to the grand final.