Rotary Young Musician

Music is the international language and Great Britain and Ireland is home to some of the most talented young instrumentalists and vocalists in the world.

We celebrate this talent with a sequence of competitions that offer many young people the chance to demonstrate their musical skills whether classical or modern.

Young people can share their gift of song or mastery of a musical instrument in Rotary’s Young Musician competition.

Participants will get the chance to experience performing on a public stage and receive feedback from experienced adjudicators.

Information will be available shortly about the entrant criteria for both vocalists and instrumentalists.

The Rotary Young Musician competition is run over three different stages; club level, district, cluster and culminate at the national final. The initial round is run by the local Rotary club. The winner(s) progress to District, then Region, and then RGBI (National). 

Age categories

The competition is open to amateur musicians up to the age of 17 - take a look at the Information Pack for further details.

For 2025/26 the usual timetable will run, i.e. schools to hold internal competitions (if applicable) in the autumn term, Rotary clubs to hold club competitions by mid January. We would appreciate all District entries by Jan 31st, though it will help planning if they can be notified by Monday Jan 27th even if not received until later. 

The District competition is Saturday Feb 8th at Poulton Hall, commencing at 10.00am; R

egional March/April (date to be confirmed, and will be posted here). 

The National Final is taking place on Saturday, 26th April 2026 in our District!  It is at Grange Senior School in Hartford, Cheshire.

Rotarians in D1180 should contact Scirard (link below) with queries. Enquiries from individuals / schools are best directed to your local Rotary club to see if they (or a neighbouring club) are running this competition.

Resources for the Public

Competition specific Information Packs, and a poster are available to the public in the Rotary Youth Competitions pages of the website. Those interested in finding out more please contact your local Rotary club in the first instance. The various competition Information Packs are published here.

Resources for Rotarians

Download information and entry forms from here - Rotarians will need to be logged in to gain access .

**Please note: If you do not print off the form and you would like to use the interactive version, please save a copy to your computer before you start inputting. If you do not save the form to your computer, you will lose all inputted information

The Information Pack contains everything a Rotary club needs to know about offering these competitions to young people in their community. The rules change (generally only minimally) from year to year. The theme changes each year. Please ensure you look at the current year's Information Pack!

District Competition History

For 2020/21 it turned out to be impossible to run the competition due to the coronavirus pandemic. A scaled-down District competition was held on Saturday 12th February 2022, but there was no Regional or National final. 

For 2022/23 the normal run of competitions was held, with the District competition date on Saturday 18th February. Entry numbers were down on previous years.

The 2023 District winners were Nathaniel Reed (Instrumentalist - Piano) and Bethan Guiver (Vocalist), both sponsored by Denbigh club. Regrettably, neither could attend the Regional competition. Rotarians are requested to help manage expectations and commitment when entering young people. One runner-up did attend as a stand-in, but did not win through to National.

For 2023/24 and 2024/5 we unfortunately had no entrants.

2023-24 Rotary Young Musician - National Final