New South Wales pianist Adam Adov has won the $33,000 first prize at the 2026 Australian National Piano Award, announced on Saturday night at Riverlinks Eastbank in Shepparton.

The 23-year-old received the $28,000 Greater Shepparton City Council Prize and a $5,000 Daphne Turnbull Bursary for music career development.

2026 First Prize recipient Adam Adov. Photo © Lingy Harhangi

Fellow New South Wales pianist Alyssa Chalmers, 22, took the $13,000 second prize, along with the $5,000 Rotary Club of Shepparton People’s Choice Prize and the Shepparton News Prize for best performance of Bach. Queensland pianist Oscar Wong, 28, received the $7,000 third prize and the Pam Wells Prize for best Chopin performance.

Held from 5 to 10 October, the biennial competition brought together 12 finalists selected from a record number of applications. Across six days, they presented 32 solo recitals, amounting to 24 hours of music by more than 50 composers spanning four centuries.

2026 Grand finalists Oscar Wong, Adam Adov and Alyssa Chalmers. Photo © Lingy Harhangi

Unlike competitions decided by a single performance, the Award requires finalists to demonstrate consistency across multiple full-length recitals, each lasting 45 minutes. Five pianists advanced to the semi-final, with three progressing to the grand final.

The repertoire ranged from Bach, Scarlatti and Beethoven to Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Barber, alongside Australian works by Carl Vine, Ross Edwards and Kym Alexandra Dillon.

An international panel of adjudicators assessed technical mastery, interpretation, historical and cultural understanding, and consistency across each pianist’s program.

Award president and co-founder Darryl Coote said the competition had become an important pathway for emerging Australian pianists since its establishment in Shepparton in 1992.

Past winners have gone on to national and international careers. The Award also announced Australian pianist Andrea Lam as its new ambassador, supporting its work to promote emerging talent.

Run entirely by volunteers, the competition will return in 2028 for its 18th edition. Previous first-prize winners include Amir Farid, Kristian Chong, Jayson Gillham, Alex Raineri, Alex Zhang and Joshua Han, who won in 2024 and has since performed across four continents and taken first prize at the International J.S. Bach Piano Competition in Germany.