The Paderewski Music Society in Bydgoszcz, Poland, has just announced the 13th edition of the Paderewski International Piano Competition. Co-organized by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, City of Bydgoszcz, Governor of the Kuyavia-Pomerania Region and several notable music industry organizers and sponsors, the Competition will take place in Bydgoszcz, Poland, on November 9-23, 2025.
Founded in 1922, the Paderewski Music Society’s first International Piano Competition was held in 1961 and since 1998 has been held in Bydgoszcz every three years. During the last twenty-five years, the Competition’s prestige has steadily increased, reaching top international ranking among the most prestigious piano competitions in the world.
Finalists of the past Paderewski Competition—including such outstanding young pianists as Yulianna Avdeeva, Dinara Klinton, Mateusz Krzyżowski, Edouard Kunz, Hyuk Lee, Phillip Lynov, Nikita Mdoyants and Zheeyoung Moon—have since embarked on successful international careers. Following the agreement between the Paderewski Music Society and the Paderewski Festival in Paso Robles, several of these young virtuosos were heard in California over the past two decades.
The Competition is open to pianists of all nationalities born between 1993 and 2009. Preliminary auditions for the Paderewski International Piano Competition will be in May and June 2025 in New York, Vienna, Warsaw, Seoul and Tokyo. The results of the preliminary auditions will be announced by July 30, 2025, and only forty pianists will be invited to perform in November in Bydgoszcz for the Competition Jury headed by Professor Piotr Paleczny. All rounds of Competition in Bydgoszcz will be open to the public.
While the repertoire of the Preliminary Round can be selected by each contestant, all forty participants in the First Round held in Bydgoszcz Nov. 8-14 will have to perform a 40–45-minute recital that includes, among others, several solo works by Paderewski. The Semi-Final Round (with only twenty pianists participating) will include another recital as well as a performance of one of selected Mozart’s Piano Concertos. The Final Round (not more than five contestants) will include a performance with the Pomeranian Philharmonic Orchestra from a selection of piano concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Paderewski, Schumann and Szymanowski. The five statutory prizes range from € 2,500 – 30,000, in addition to prizes for the best performances of Paderewski’s solo work, the best Mozart piano concerto, the best semi-final recital, and the best Polish contestant.
The application deadline is April 22, 2025. More information is available on the Paderewski International Piano Competition website at paderewskicompetition.pl.
[Source: Paderewski Music Society press release, Jan. 14, 2025]