APRA AMCOS and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC) have announced the 2026 Screen Music Award winners at a ceremony in Brisbane held on Wednesday evening, 28 October.

Featuring host Rob Collins and guest presenters Claudia Karvan and Ayesha Madon, this year’s ceremony marked composer-performer Erkki Veltheim’s final year as Music Director.

Ned Beckley, Josh Hogan & Joni Hogan at the 2026 Screen Music Awards. Photo © Cassidy Cloupet

Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan led this year’s ceremony with four award wins for their work on Tales from Outer Suburbia, a television adaption of Sean Tan’s series of short stories – Best Music for Children’s Programming, Best Opening Title Television Theme, Best Soundtrack Album and Best Original Song Composed for the Screen for Nothing Stays the Same with Joni Hogan.

Feature Film Score of the Year was won by Piers Burbrook de Vere and Rose Mackenzie-Peterson for Addition.

Helena Czajka took home her second consecutive win in the Best Music for a Documentary for Sentient, looking into animal welfare in the field of laboratory research.

Antony Partos at the 2026 Screen Music Awards. Photo © Cassidy Cloupet

Antony Partos was awarded Best Music for A Television Drama for his score for The Artful Dodger, while Peter Corrigan, Georgina Darvidis and Matthew Sheers took home Best Music for a Television Comedy for The Witchy Girls.

Adelaide composer Christopher Larkin earned Best Music for a Video Game or Other Interactive Media for his work on Hollow Knight: Silksong, the hotly-anticipated sequel to the internationally acclaimed 2017 game. Larkin also received nominations at The Game Awards in 2025 and the 22nd British Academy Games Awards for the score.

Emerging Screen Composer of the Year was awarded to Tasmanian composer Finn Clarke. Clarke has contributed music to The Raftsmen, The Platypus Guardian, True South (with Elena Kats-Chernin) and Moonbird, among other screen projects, and he was awarded the 2025-26 Brian May Scholarship, allowing him to travel to the University of Southern California to study screen composition. He has earned two previous nominations at the Screen Music Awards.

Adam Gock and Dinesh Wicks took both awards for Most Performed Screen Composer for both Australia and international – the former, for their 12th year running.

The two also won Best Music for an Unscripted or Reality Television Series for Million Dollar Secret, alongside co-composers Adam Sofo, Brontë Horder, Cassie To, David Bruggemann, Lydia Davies, Mitch Stewart
and Rory Chenoweth.

Best Music for an Advertisement went to Benjamin Lam for Lego – Project Vehicles, and Best Music for a Short Film was awarded to Nicholas Gardiner for Trading Cards.

Cezary Skubiszewski accepting Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen at the 2026 Screen Music Awards. Photo © Cassidy Cloupet

As announced earlier this month, Cezary Skubiszewski received the Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen award at the ceremony. Film producer Nelson Woss, with whom the composer worked on Red Dog, presented him with the award.

More about the 2026 Screen Music Awards can be found here.