I
The Preliminary Round Jury is comprised of three renowned musicians who are appointed by the Organiser of the Ljubljana Festival International Competition – Piano 2026 (hereinafter called Competition).
II
The Preliminary Round Jury acts on the basis of the current Preliminary Round Rules and General Competition Rules.
III
The general task of the Preliminary Round Jury is to evaluate the interpretative skills of each applicant and admit the best applicants to Round 1 of Competition.
IV
Each Juror is obliged to listen to and evaluate all applicants of the Preliminary Round of Competition.
V
The Preliminary Round evaluation will be based on the video recordings submitted by the applicants, as required by the General Competition Rules, as well as the documents included in their applications. The video must be filmed in a single shot, with high audio quality, without cuts between the pieces, with a fixed camera that frames the entire figure of the pianist and with his/her hands and face clearly visible. The applicants must play from memory.
VI
After reviewing each applicant (listening to their video recordings and studying their documents), the Jurors will fill out the online evaluation form. The Jurors should consider the video recordings as well as all the documents uploaded with the application. The Jurors will evaluate the applicants using a numerical scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest score. The Jurors cannot vote for their students (the definition of which is written under Article VIII). They should mark the letter “S” next to the names of any of their students.
VII
After the evaluation of all the applicants is complete, the Organiser will calculate the arithmetic mean of an applicant’s score to two decimal places by dividing the total sum of awarded points by the number of the Jurors who did the evaluation (appropriately lower in the case of the students). After receiving the evaluations and making the calculations, Organiser will present the results to the Preliminary Jury. If needed, the Preliminary Jury will, without any debate, repeat the evaluation of applicants receiving the same scores in order to receive just the required number of applicants advancing to Round 1 of Competition and to the waiting list. The names of successful applicants accepted to the Competition and those on the waiting list will be publicly presented on Competition website in alphabetical order.
VIII
The Preliminary Round Jury is obliged to state whether among the applicants there are any pianists who are currently their students* or have been their regular students (private lessons or in Music Schools) at any point in time after March 2022. The Jurors must also state whether they have a close personal relation** with any of the applicants.
* The term student does not apply in a case of short, occasional collaboration between an applicant and a Juror during a masterclass or similar activity.
** Here a personal relation means that a member of the Jury and an applicant share a dwelling or are related (up to the fourth degree of kinship), or are spouses or are cohabiting.
IX
The Preliminary Round Jury will in principle select no more than 30 applicants to participate in Round 1 of Competition. The number includes two or three pianists chosen by the Artistic Director of the Competition personally (the pianists will be chosen from the laureates of WFIMC piano competitions). The Preliminary Jury will also select 10 applicants who will be placed on the waiting list, in the order of the received points in the Preliminary round. The waiting list will however be publicly presented in the alphabetical order.
X
The Jurors should not publicly state their opinions about the Preliminary Round applicants before the results of the Preliminary Round are published. The results will be published no later than August 10, 2025 on Competition website.
XI
The Preliminary Round Jury’s decisions are final and they are not subject to appeal.
XII
In exceptional circumstances (such as violations of the regulations mentioned in the Preliminary Round Rules) Organiser of Competition may sanction and dismiss a Preliminary Jury member.
XIII
All issues which cannot be solved on the basis of the present Rules will be subject to discussion by members of the Preliminary Round Jury. The solutions thus accepted will be subject to the approval of Organiser of Competition.
