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Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition Begins Thursday in Florida

January 6, 2026, 10:40 PM · The 2026 Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition (EOIVC) officially begins Thursday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. with the start of its Preliminary Round, featuring 19 violinists ranging in age from 18 to 30 and representing 11 countries.

Violinist Sirena Huang, winner of the inaugural EOIVC in 2017.

All rounds will be live streamed by the EOIVC’s YouTube Channel and the Violin Channel. Find the schedule of whom is playing when here.

The Preliminary Round will take place over three days (January 8-10), followed by the Semifinal Round January 13–14 and the Final Round on January 18 at the Keith C. & Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center. For those in Florida who wish to see the performances live: admission to the Preliminary and Semifinal rounds at Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall is free; tickets for the Final Round are available here.

The jury for EOIVC 2026, selected by Elmar Oliveira, includes Chairman Andrés Cárdenes, Ilya Kaler, Ida Kavafian, Irina Muresanu, Philip Setzer, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and Kyoko Takezawa, with Elizabeth Pitcairn in reserve as an alternate judge.

The EOIVC 2026 will award more than $175,000 in prizes to the finalists, including cash prizes, instruments and national and international concert engagements.

Founded by and named after the American violinist Elmar Oliveira in 2016, the Elevar Foundation holds the EOIVC every three years at Lynn Conservatory of Music, where Oliveira was a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence until his retirement in 2023. Past winners of the EOIVC include Hina Khuong-Huu (2023), Julian Rhee (2020) and Sirena Huang (2017).

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