Berlin-based Australian violinist Beatrice Colombis has won the 12th Michael Hill International Violin Competition, generously supported by the Hill Family Foundation for Arts and Music.
Following a spectacular Grand Final at Auckland Town Hall’s Great Hall tonight in which three finalists, including Tianyou Ma and Jakow Pavlenko, each performed a concerto with the Auckland Philharmonia, 22-year-old Colombis was announced the winner of the 2026 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, receiving NZ$40,000, a recording contract with the Atoll label, a multi-centre Winner’s Tour with Chamber Music New Zealand and Auckland Philharmonia, and a personalised professional development programme. Her teacher, Professor Suyeon Kang, is a former winner of the Competition.
The full list of prize winners is:
First prize (prizes as above): Beatrice Colombis (Sydney/Berlin)
Second prize (NZD$10,000): Tianyou Ma (New York)
Third prize (NZD$5000): Jakow Pavlenko (Berlin)
Fourth prize (NZD$4000): Hyein Koo (Seoul)
Fifth prize (NZD$3000): Julia Wang (Vienna)
Sixth prize (NZD$2000): Xunyue Zhang (Berlin)
Best performance of the New Zealand-commissioned work (Chasm by Salina Fisher): Beatrice Colombis
Chamber Music Prize (NZD$1000): Jakow Pavlenko
Sheila Smith Prize (Three-year loan of a Domenico Montagnana violin, facilitated by Rare Violins of New York In Consortium): Beatrice Colombis
Competition Executive Director Anne Rodda said, “This year, we celebrated twenty-five years of artistic excellence and have been extremely humbled by the respect we received from the global community. For a relatively young organisation, from a small nation in the South Pacific, we are proud to stand alongside the world’s leading violin competitions and contribute to nurturing the next generation of great artists.
“This competition of course began as the dream of Sir Michael Hill. Michael believed New Zealand could create a competition of genuine international significance. He believed excellence mattered. He believed talented young musicians deserved opportunity. And he taught all of us that ambitious goals become reality when people work tirelessly towards them.
“We are delighted and incredibly grateful, this Competition and every Competition, to see up close, for those of us in the concert hall, and also for the hundreds of thousands who tune in to our live streams from across the world, the wide-reaching value of the Hill family’s commitment to supporting the next generation of violinists.”
In 2026, the international judging panel comprised esteemed global violinists James Ehnes, Ed Dusinberre, Josef Špaček, Geneva Lewis, Prof Vera Tsu Weiling, Andrew Beer and Natsuko Yoshimoto. The panel was chaired by Alastair Carruthers CNZM.
