The twenty-first and most recent edition of this competition took place in Bodø, Norway on 17 August 2024 and was won by Leonhard Baumgartner, who played the violin for Austria.

The idea to organise a competition for young musicians was first examined by the EBU Expert Group for television music programmes in March 1980 during a meeting chaired by BBC's Humphrey Burton in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 1986, due to the increasing number of participating broadcasters, a semi-final round was introduced at the competition, from which, according to the results of the jury's voting, five to eight of them progressed to the televised final.

[7] The 2020 edition of the contest was scheduled to take place in Zagreb, Croatia on 21 June to coincide with World Music Day celebrations.

The final of the contest would have taken place on an open-air stage in King Tomislav Square,[8] with the semi-finals held on 17 June in the Bers Hall of the Zagreb Academy of Music.

[10] The future of the contest remained uncertain until 3 February 2022, when Norwegian broadcaster NRK confirmed, in an online article regarding its national selection Virtuos, that the upcoming edition would instead now be held in Montpellier, France in July.

[11] Each country is represented by one young talented musician that performs a piece of classical music of their choice accompanied by the local orchestra of the host broadcaster and a jury, composed of international experts, decides the top three participants.

[17] For a number of past contests (1992, 1994, 1998 and 2002), a compilation album was released by the host broadcaster and supported by an independent record label.

If an EBU active member broadcaster wishes to participate, it must fulfil conditions as laid down by the rules of the contest (of which a separate copy is drafted annually).

[18] Eligibility to participate is not determined by geographic inclusion within the continent of Europe, despite the "Euro" in "Eurovision" – nor does it have any relation to the European Union.

No fewer than eight countries have made only one appearance at the event prior to withdrawing (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, North Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro).

It was the first EBU event to include a large number of former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact member states, many of whom debuted in the Young Musicians prior to their Eurovision Song Contest debut (including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, North Macedonia, and Poland).