Jugend musiziert is a music competition for children and adolescents in Germany on regional, federal and national level.
In Germany, the nationwide competition refers to young adults up to 20 years and for the category singing up to 27 years. It serves both the promotion of amateur music and the promotion of young people with professional musical ambitions. The participants should therefore not be in a musical training (full-time) or professional practice. Many well-known musicians performed there as prize-winners the first time to a wider audience. Moreover, success at the competition often is a benchmark for the quality of schools and music lessons. The number of participants in the regional competition from an institution is a clear indication of their commitment and the associated motivation.
The competition is divided into three stages: First stage is at regional level, second is at federal state level for those who passed the first stage. Those passing federal state level will compete at national level. The instrument categories change from solo participation to ensemble each year. In 1993, singing was added to the originally purely instrumental competition. Currently, the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin have a pilot phase for the Pop Music category with the instruments guitar pop, pop-bass, drums and pop singing. North Rhine-Westphalia has also added the category DJ.
The participants play music from different epochs. The length of the presentation depends on age and lasts from 6 to 20 minutes.
In 2005, "Jugend musiziert" had nationwide over 20,000 participants in 148 domestic regional competitions and 30 German schools abroad. About 6,500 of them were forwarded to the federal state competitions and nearly 2,000 first prize-winners attended the national competition. The regional competitions usually take place in the first months of a year.
The competition was founded in 1963 under the sponsorship of Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council) and the patronage of the President of Germany.
| Regional competition | 25–21 Points | 20–16 Points | from 15 Points | from 23 Points in age group II to State level | |
| State competition | 25–23 Points | 22–20 Points | from 19 Points | from 23 Points in age group III to Federal level | |
| Federal competition | 25–24 Points | 23–22 Points | from 21 Points |