The Reina Sofia Prize for Musical Composition, awarded each year by a jury of internationally renowned composers, aims to be a platform promoting the creation of new works for the orchestral repertoire.

It is most likely that, in reflecting about composers, our mind goes back to distant times, to a past where geniuses created and the public listened. Year after year, audiences fill opera houses and auditoriums to celebrate works that are already centuries old. But the truth is that music composition is more alive than ever; the beat of our culture can still be heard, and our responsibility is to make sure that it doesn’t go unnoticed. The works of composers enrich our present and preserve the legacy that we venerate in auditoriums and conservatories. The Foundation is aware that support networks promoting the work of composers, like those that were put in place in the past, are critical. Not only for composers to be recognized as they deserve and for their efforts to be meaningful, but also to create a platform that disseminates their music, helping it be widely known, performed and listened to.

The Reina Sofía Prize for Musical Composition is decided in a competition organized to stimulate creation within the current music landscape, with an economic endowment of €100,000 for the winning composer, the most important at the European level. This prestigious award is possible thanks to the involvement of Her Majesty Queen Sofía. Finally, the winning composition will be performed by the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the most important orchestra in the country.

From the 40th anniversary of the Prize onwards, and with the aim of promoting its national visibility, the winning work of each edition has been included in the annual tour and meeting programs of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra (JONDE), the most important orchestra of its kind at the national level.

For several years, the winner of the Reina Sofía Prize for Musical Composition has been appointed composer of the Xarxa de Músiques a Catalunya, within the concert series of Joventuts Musicals de Catalunya. This appointment entailed the commission of two chamber music works for two different ensembles of the Xarxa de Músiques.