[2] The competition was established in 1978 by Humphrey Burton, Walter Todds and Roy Tipping, former members of the BBC Television Music Department.

[4] In 2014, the BBC Young Musician Jazz Award was introduced;[5] Alexander Bone, a saxophonist, was the inaugural winner.

For the tenth edition of the competition in 1996, a series of recitals given by past finalists were broadcast on BBC Two in a late-night timeslot.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary, the first BBC Young Musician Prom was held at the Royal Albert Hall and broadcast live on 15 July 2018.

Previously, additional programmes were broadcast as part of each competition alongside coverage in some later years on BBC Radio 3.

[2] The adjudicators for this competition were Marin Alsop, Carlos Bonell, Peter Sadlo, Thea King, Sergei Nakariakov, Angela Hewitt and Kathryn McDowell.

The judges were Kerry Andrew (chair), Alpesh Chauhan, Natalie Clein, John Harle and Sunwook Kim.

[40] Judging every televised round of this year's competition are trumpeter Alison Balsom, pianist and composer Alexis Ffrench, and multi-instrumentalist and broadcaster Hannah Catherine Jones.

The two quarter finals were won by Jamaal Kashim and Shlomi Shahaf respectively, with Hugo Svedberg, Jacky Zhang and Ryan Wang advancing to the semi-final as "wildcards".