Colombia welcomes the world: City of Bogotá International Violin Competition

In the heart of Colombia, Bogotá has built a reputation for more than half a century as one of Latin America’s most vibrant cultural capitals. Recognised as a UNESCO Creative City of Music and considered the Musical Capital of the Americas, the Colombian capital’s rich cultural ecosystem is nourished by a busy calendar of classical music events, with several historic orchestras and auditoriums attracting cosmopolitan audiences with open ears every week. For this reason, the arrival of the eagerly-awaited City of Bogotá International Violin Competition seems natural – an initiative seeking to position the city as a world benchmark in classical music.

Organised by Bogotá’s Secretary of Culture, the Teatro Mayor and the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, the competition is aimed at violinists up to 30 years of age from all over the world, the first of its kind in Latin America. “We want the violin competition to be disruptive and to accompany the daily life of this city for at least a week”, says Santiago Trujillo, Bogotá’s Secretary of Culture. The competition takes place from 31st October to 7th November 2025.

The competition is distinctive not only for its prize money – which totals $70,000 – but also its educational, social and cultural components. All travel expenses, including airfare, will be covered for the 20 participants selected to attend, and the event is seeking to strengthen both the city’s violin and musical communities, as well as its listening public. “The competition has many benefits for the city,” Trujillo says. “The first is for audiences, who have never experienced the excitement of a competition and who will have a new format to enjoy classical music. We believe that it will be a gift for this audience that has been growing for 50 years in the city. The second is that there will be a creative dialogue and a formative process in which violinists from Bogotá and Colombia can exchange with world-class performers.”

The competition rules stipulate that selected participants give a masterclass for violinists in the city, which is expected to impact, among others, more than 30,000 children who are beneficiaries of the music education programme ‘Vamos a la Filarmónica’, led by the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition, the competition will include opportunities for artistic exchange with prominent international soloists, including the six members of the jury: Lee-Chin Siow (Singapore), Silvia Marcovici (Romania), Alexis Cárdenas (Venezuela), Leticia Moreno (Spain), Birgit Kolar (Austria) and Lucie Robert (US).

The competition benefits from the solid symphonic ecosystem of Bogotá, which welcomes world-leading musicians and ensembles to venues including the Teatro Mayor, the Teatro Colón, and the Concert Hall of the Luis Ángel Arango Library. The city also has its own Philharmonic Orchestra, which has played a fundamental role in developing audiences and performers. “It is an orchestra that has been building an audience that loves classical music for more than 50 years,” Trujillo says. “The orchestra has also spent 15 years creating a youth and children's orchestral system in schools and working-class neighbourhoods, and that has managed to energise at least six youth symphony groups.”

The competition is also distinctive in commissioning a new, unpublished work that participants will perform in competition – the best performance of which will be rewarded with $20,000. In this first edition, the piece will be written by Carolina Noguera, one of the most important Colombian composers on the scene. “This is a clear and forceful message that repertoire is composed here for first-class instrumentalists and performers, and that Colombia has world-leading female composers who are making really significant explorations in sound,” Trujillo stresses. “We would love for violinists to retain this new piece in their repertoire, for Carolina Noguera to be performed in other parts of the world and for the piece to become part of the Latin American violin repertoire.”

Participants will compete for a first place prize of $30,000 and an invitation to participate as a soloist with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá in the 2026 season, while the second place winner will receive $20,000. “We set out to do something memorable, and today we can say that we are among the seven competitions with the highest prize money. We want the international classical music sector to know that this competition exists in Bogotá and that we will do it with the best conditions,” Trujillo says.

Trujillo, the current Bogotá Secretary of Culture and one of the country’s leading arts administrators, himself trained as a professional violinist. For him, classical music today has two major dimensions: “On the one hand, it is a great museum of sound, created from the aesthetic, emotional and intellectual circles of many different generations – but at the same time it has the responsibility of being a laboratory for the new sonorities of the present and the future. This double condition of being a museum and a laboratory makes classical music an artform lauded as the soundtrack of humanity. But on the other hand, I would say that at the moment, society suffers from a lack of attention. Listening attentively to a symphony by Brahms, Shostakovich or Prokofiev is one of those exercises of emotional and artistic attention that humanity desperately needs to recover.”

But one thing is certain: the Colombian capital is not only a great host for artists and visitors, but also a centre of creation, and an inflection point of artistic expression for anyone looking towards Latin America. Trujillo is adamant that the world’s violinists will find in Bogotá “an audience full of affection, keen to discover the voices, sounds and scenes of the whole world. A cosmopolitan audience that is capable of enjoying the most local, the closest, the most traditional and ancestral – but at the same time enjoys the most contemporary and universal.”

“Bogotá is home to one of the most interesting audiences in this region of the world,” Trujillo says, “as evidenced by the fact that today we have the largest shows and concerts in South America, and that the city has become a must-see destination for the leading artists of any music scene.” Crowning the eastern range of the Andes mountains, Bogotá is also a fascinating tourist and cultural destination for all its visitors: “It has a spectacular gastronomy, it is culturally very well endowed and in very good health. It has fabulous theatres with great architectural relevance, a network of libraries with important collections and, of course, first-rate music and theatre festivals,” Trujillo points out.

“Bogotá is a vibrant city – it is not only the economic and political centre of the country but also the cultural centre, and to be all three at the same time is very exciting for us,” Trujillo concludes. “We want many people to feel called to this International Violin Competition, and I am sure that we are going to fall short of the people who want to attend. And it’s not just about the final rounds – it’s about the social component of celebration and gathering that any competition or festival has. We want to celebrate music and we are going to do it in many ways.”

The International Violin Competition City of Bogotá is open for entrants until 31st May, and runs from 31st October to 7th November 2025.

This article was sponsored by Asociación Nacional de Música Sinfónica.