2026 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest

This annual contest from Musicworks magazine is open to experimental electronic music of any stripe — acousmatic, electroacoustic, glitch, soundscape, IDM, turntablism, video music — from entrants anywhere in the world, at any age or career stage. The one firm content rule is that your piece can't have been released for sale, physically or digitally, before the deadline.

Entry costs $30 CAD for a first piece and $5 CAD for each additional one (uncapped, though extra entries are sometimes paused when the system is hit by bots). Every entrant gets a free one-year print subscription to Musicworks, worth roughly $44 to $59, regardless of outcome. Submissions are capped at ten minutes, as an MP3 or MP4, and judged anonymously, so don't put your name in the file or title.

Prizes are modest cash plus exposure: $500 for first place, with a composer profile in the magazine and a release on its companion CD; $200 for second and $100 for third, both with online coverage; and a separate $300 Marcelle Deschênes Prize for an entrant who identifies as female or non-binary, flagged by writing "Marcelle Prize" at checkout. No match funding applies — it's a straightforward entry-fee contest.

The deadline is 9 November 2026 at 23:59 Pacific time, with jurying running into early 2027 and winners notified that spring. The magazine doesn't publish specific judging criteria beyond noting it's a blind, juried process.