05/10/2026
Public Comment on the BBC Young Musicians Competition 2026
BBC Young Musician – talent, opportunity and who gets to be seen
BBC Young Musician remains an important showcase for exceptional young musical talent. The standard in the current series is high, and the young performers are worthy of recognition for the dedication and musicianship required to be shortlisted.
However, watching the programme again raises an important question.
Are we seeing the full breadth of young musical talent that exists across the country, or predominantly those young people who have already had access to the training and opportunities needed to reach an elite competition?
In 2021 a local Cambridge sixth form college student called Jordan Ashman (percussion) entered our first ever competition and won the DYMF Patrons Award.
He went on to become BBC Young musician of the year overall in 2022.
Talent does not develop in a vacuum. Reaching this standard while still at school can require years of special tuition, access to good instruments, ensembles, accompanists, examinations, performance opportunities and, importantly, parents or teachers who understand the pathways available. Those opportunities are simply not available equally to every young musician.
Where are the talented youngsters from ordinary state schools, lower-income families, rural communities and areas where specialist music teaching is limited? Where are those who have not attended specialist music schools, junior conservatoires or intensive private programmes? And where are the young musicians whose parents simply did not know that these opportunities existed?
There is also a question about how early we expect young people to enter an elite competitive environment. At 15, 16 or 17 they are still developing technically, artistically and personally. Competition can be tremendously positive, but it can also be demanding and stressful. We believe a system genuinely interested in potential should consider not only how accomplished a young musician is today, but what that young person might become if somebody gives them an opportunity.
Some promising musicians may not even have reached Grade 8. That does not necessarily mean they lack talent. They may have started later, had interrupted tuition, been unable to afford regular lessons or examinations, or simply developed outside the conventional graded route. Potential and formal attainment are not the same thing.
This is where the DYMF has deliberately tried to do things differently.
Over the past five years, and on a shoestring compared with the resources and reach available to an organisation such as the BBC, the DYMF has demonstrated what can be achieved. We have auditioned 385 aspiring and talented young musicians, and awarded 36 financial awards and issued 8 musical instruments. We do not have the BBC’s funding, infrastructure, broadcasting platform or national resources. Yet we have created opportunities for young musicians to compete, perform publicly, gain confidence, meet other musicians, make valuable connections and showcase talents that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
We are proud of what has been achieved, but it also raises a larger question. If a small organisation with very limited resources can work deliberately to widen the doorway, what might be possible if organisations with substantially greater resources made widening access an even greater part of their mission?
Our purpose is not simply to identify a winner. It is to help create a pathway.
Of course the BBC guarantees those opportunities by virtue of its broadcasting charter.
We want to find talent before opportunity has already done the selecting.
BBC Young Musician shows what remarkable young people can achieve when talent and opportunity come together. The DYMF asks a slightly different question:
How many equally promising young musicians are still out there, with the talent—but waiting for someone to give them the opportunity?
That is the gap we are trying to close. We are happy to discuss this with anyone from the BBC or academies locally and encourage organisations to sponsor and support our mission.
