A teenage violinist has won the BBC Young Musician competition 2026, in the first all-female final in the competition’s 48-year history.

The judges, Joanna MacGregor, Ben Gernon and Errollyn Wallen, hailed Sofia Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as full of insights, poetry and maturity.

The 18-year-old is from Leicestershire, and in her first year of undergraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music.

The brainchild of Humphrey Burton, the biennial BBC competition was set up in 1978 and has produced finalists such as Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Alison Balsom, Stephen Hough and, in 2004, Nicola Benedetti, who was the last violinist to win.

Demetriades was one of several hundred to send in a video application, before 40 young players were selected to attend live auditions in Bath Spa University to gain one of eight places in the quarter-finals – which took place on Demetriades’ 18th birthday.…