Judges hail Sofia Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as full of insights, poetry and maturity

A teenage violinist has won the BBC Young Musician competition 2026, in the first all-female final in the competition’s 48-year history.

The judges, Joanna MacGregor, Ben Gernon and Errollyn Wallen, hailed Sofia Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as full of insights, poetry and maturity.