What we do...

YBT (Young Belgian Talent) is a Belgian not for profit organisation dedicated to supporting outstandingly gifted, young classical musicians. Through our triannual competition, we look for exceptionally talented musicians who, without additional help and support, would be unable to reach their life ambitions and goals.

Apart from financial sponsoring, YBT offers their musicians access to our professional network.  By doing so, we can support them with professional advice and coaching from finance, tax and administration, to PR and  marketing, media relations and personal presentation skills. In addition we offer a professional audio & video recording service for broadcast, multi-media, and CD & LP production. (Some YBT CD, LP and download products are available via one of our sponsors' Pearl Acoustics bv webshop here)  You can buy YBT CD In fact, we try and offer whatever our young musicians need most to help them prepare for a solo career.

Working together with the conservatoires, established music academies and the national media, we search for candidates who show demonstrable skills and exceptional determination to make a career in their field. Via our live audition and interview rounds, our professional review board select five finalists to go on to the live Finals.

The YBT finals are supervised by a jury consisting of specialist musicians and representatives from the music academic world, the professional music industry in general, the world of business and leadership, and the winner of the previous Young Belgian Talent Competitions. Under the direction of an appointed chairperson, the jury select their overall winner. In addition, we have a 'Public Prize' which the audience vote based upon the performances given in the live finals.  However, since 2018 all our finalists are eligible to receive support from us until they reach the age of 25.

History shows us that winning YBT changes the careers of our musicians. Vilmos Csikos told us that it was thanks to YBT that he was selected for many prestigeous international masterclasses and competitions, plus many performing opportunities.

Aurore Dassesse too, said in a television interview how the support YBT gave her made all the difference. One of her videos, financed and filmed by professionals appointed by YBT, has now reached over 880K views on Youtube alone!