Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: AMAS 2025, City Recital Hall, photo by Jess Gleeson  

Art music, like all cultural forms, evolves alongside its creators, audiences, and contexts. To reflect this, the Art Music Awards must also adapt - celebrating the diversity, innovation, and excellence across Australia's vibrant art music community.

Following a comprehensive review by a panel of experts, the 2026 Art Music Awards will introduce several key changes aimed at improving clarity, accessibility, and representation.

Why now?

The last major guideline review in 2019 led to broader categories and increased inclusivity. As outlined in a 2020 Resonate article, we introduced:

• New Work of the Year categories for Dramatic and Electroacoustic/Sound Art works.
• Luminary Awards for sustained contributions.
• A dedicated space for improvised music in Performance of the Year: Jazz/Improvised.

These changes resulted in a significant increase in nominations and a wider range of first-time nominees and winners.

2026 changes at a glance

New Categories

To better reflect the volume and diversity of submissions, two major category expansions are being introduced:

Work of the Year: Chamber Music & Large Ensemble will now be split into:

• Work of the Year: Solo & Small Ensemble (1-4 parts/players)
• Work of the Year: Medium Ensemble (5-12 parts/players)
• Work of the Year: Large Ensemble (13+ parts/players)

Performance of the Year categories will be renamed and expanded to include:

• Performance of the Year: Soloist (solo works or featured soloists)
• Performance of the Year: Ensemble - Classical & Experimental (5-12 parts/players)
• Performance of the Year: Ensemble - Jazz & Improvised (13+ parts/players)

Category tweaks

• Work of the Year: Jazz becomes Work of the Year: Jazz & Improvised Music, aligning with performance categories.
• Work of the Year: Choral now includes all vocal ensemble works, from chamber voice to massed singers.

Note: Works can only be submitted in one category. For example, a jazz duo must choose between Solo & Small Ensemble or Jazz & Improvised Music.

Luminary Awards: National Finalists

After being introduced in 2020, the uptake of the Luminary Awards categories has increased and become highly contested each year. Based on this, we are excited to announce that from 2026, finalists will be announced for:

• Luminary Awards: National Individual
• Luminary Awards: National Organisation

State and Territory Luminary Awards will remain winner-only and announced ahead of the ceremony, alongside the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music.

All Luminary Awards will continue to be focused on sustained contribution, demonstrated over a 3-5-year portfolio, and previous winners cannot be nominated for the 3 years following their award.

Regional engagement: Self-Nominations

A priority of this guideline revision is to ensure the incredible work being made outside of Australia's capital cities is being acknowledged. To better support regional artists, self-nominations will be trialled for the Excellence in a Regional Area category.

Metropolitan artists working regionally must now nominate with a regional partner or co-nominee, ensuring shared recognition.

No major changes to other categories

All other categories remain unchanged. Full guidelines will be released in early 2026, ahead of nominations opening in February.

These include:

• Work of the Year: Dramatic (for theatrical and choreographed music)
• Work of the Year: Electroacoustic / Sound Art (for works where electronic or digitally manipulated sound is the primary focus)
• Excellence in Experimental Practice (for developments that question, enhance, or extend standard music practice within art music or a subset thereof)
• Excellence in Music Education (for pedagogical, creative or professional development activities that champion Australian art music repertoire)

In service to community

We're proud to support the extraordinary talent in Australia's art music community. Your feedback continues to shape these awards - thank you to everyone who has contributed over the past five years; whether as a nominator, nominee, APRA AMCOS or AMC member, judge, chair, industry partner, or invested art music citizen - your input helps to shape the Art Music Awards to be the best they can be.