WELCOME TO THE BMF
The Birmingham Music Festival is one of Britain's leading piano competitions.
We welcome entrants of all ages and all abilities from enthusiastic beginners and gifted amateurs to veteran competitors.
We have a fantastic venue: The Ruddock Performing Arts Centre at King Edward’s Schools. The BMF offers high quality grand pianos in both of our performance theatres and adjudicators to match.
We think the Birmingham Music Festival offers the very best in amateur music making.
We look forward to seeing you at the Festival!
Our Aim:
"The object of the Festival is to advance, encourage and foster the art of music making by holding and promoting an annual competitive festival of public performances, recitals and concerts"
FESTIVAL 2026
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The 2026 Festival is now open for entries - the deadline is 31 July but earlier entries are encouraged.
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You can become Festival's Individual Supporter or Business Supporter.
PHOTOS
To see pictures from our Festival in October 2025 and from the Winners' Concert in July 2025 check our Facebook page
LATEST NEWS: MARGARET FINGERHUT
Our President Margaret Fingerhut MBE has now released a new CD Ukraine - A Piano Portrait on SOMM. It is already being hailed as “unmissable” in Gramophone
MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN
Entries for the 84th Birmingham Music Festival are now closed.
We have been delighted by the tremendous interest in this year's Festival. With almost 300 entries received, the Festival has now reached capacity and entries are therefore closed.
We are pleased to welcome David Quigley and Caroline Rae as our adjudicators. Both are highly respected musicians and educators whose insightful and constructive feedback is always greatly valued. As adjudicators of international standing, they bring a wealth of expertise and experience that we are sure participants will appreciate.
Our team is now busy preparing the Festival programme, and we plan to send individual schedules to participants before the end of August.
Even though entries have now closed, you can still be part of this year's Festival by becoming a Festival Supporter and/or ordering a Festival Programme. Programmes will be posted out in the first half of September.
We look forward to welcoming participants, supporters and audiences to the Festival and to hearing such a wonderful range of performances in October 2026.
Olga
Olga Maleva
Chairman
SUPPORT THE BMF
The BMF is a registered charity and relies on external funding to provide our annual Festival. Please help by making a donation if you can.
MAKE A DONATION TO THE BMF
If you would like to make a voluntary contribution to our finances please click here:
