Course of the competition

The competition shall be held in three rounds. 24 participants will be accepted into the 1st Round. 12 participants shall advance to the 2nd Round, 6 participants shall advance to the 3rd Round, and 3 finalists in the the last round, the Final.

All rounds of competition performances are public.

 

Pre-Jury / Jury / Rules

The Pre-Jury will review all applications material to review anonymously and nominate the 24 applicants they find qualified to participate in te competition.

When adjudicating the participants and awarding Prizes the Jury must take into account artistic as well as instrumental aspects of the performances. After assessment of the participants’ artistic and instrumental standard as demonstrated through the varied repertoire of the rounds, the individual Juror votes for the participants who, up to the time of voting, in his or her opinion are the best qualified. It is thus the individual participant’s overall performance throughout the competition that must always be taken into account.

The goal of the Carl Nielsen International Competition is to award all the advertised Prizes. Only an unanimous Jury can decide not to award one or more prizes on the grounds that the standard of theparticipants does not live up to the demands that ought to be made by international competition of this kind.

Student of a jury member

If a jury member’s student is among the participants, that jury member may not evaluate him/her.

Jury members must not teach their students during the competition itself, otherwise the participant will be excluded from the competition. A student is a participant who studies with a member of the jury long – term and continuously as part of regular studies or private lessons, or whose studies were completed on or after 1 st January 2026.

The provision does not apply to participation in the masterclass.