The Ivors Composer Awards take place this year on 17 November 2026 at Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, London when the winners will be announced from this year’s nominees. The Ivors Academy has just announced the 36 composers and librettists nominated for an Ivor Novello Award across nine categories, with 15 first-time nominees including Ailís Ní Ríain, Anselm McDonnell, Deirdre McKay, Ioana Șelaru, Pav Gekko, Richard Collins, Ruth Morley, Sam Slater, Samuel D Loveless, Sasha Scott, Thomas Farnon and librettist Lee Hall.
Best Original Documentary Score is a new category which aims to recognise the creative contribution original music can have to the telling and impact of real stories. Best Original Film Score and Best Original Television Score are categories historically celebrated at The Ivors, which have been moved to join the rest of the composition categories at The Ivors Composer Awards for the first time. These changes either bring all composer activity together – recognising composers working across genres and disciplines, from film, television and video games to concert halls, community engagement and live performance – or, as a cynic might suggest, weaken the impact of the categories focusing on contemporary classical music.
The Awards are being presented in association with BBC Radio 3 and the ceremony will be broadcast across BBC Radio 3’s schedule, in programmes such as The New Music Show (21/11/2026), Sound of Cinema (21/11/2026) as well as on Breakfast and In Tune.
- Best Community and Participation Composition with ABRSM, original music created for voluntary, amateur or youth performers: Samuel D Loveless for his multi-format neurodivergent-focussed work Benches, Ailís Ní Ríain for her brass band piece Holocene, Brian Irvine for How We Stand, How We Breathe, a collaboration with a diverse range of individuals and groups across Northern Ireland.
- Best Large-Scale Composition, works written for 13 or more performers: Anna Thorvaldsdottir for her cello concerto Before We Fall, Robert Laidlow for his tone poem for orchestra Exoplanets, Hania Rani for her piano concerto Non Fiction, Laura Bowler for The White Book – a work inspired by Han Kang’s book of the same name – and Cassie Kinoshi’s [UNTITLED] for ensemble and solo turntables.
- Best Small-Scale Composition, solo or ensembles of fewer than 13 performers: Ben Nobuto for Hope Spiral, Sasha Scott for Night Owl, Ruth Morley for Reef, Alex Paxton for Scrunchy Touch Sweetly To Fall (Kite and Finger Run) and Hania Rani for Shining.
- Best Vocal and Choral Composition: Anselm McDonnell for A Taste of Trapped Sun, written for the BBC Singers reflecting on the 2016 signing of the Paris Agreement, Stephen McNeff’s Ballads of a Bogman – a song cycle for tenor and piano with poems by Sigerson Clifford [see my review], Richard Blackford for The Black Lake, Martin Suckling for Songs of Sleep and Prophecy, and Deirdre McKay for Litany to the Magdalene Dead, a song commemorating the women who died in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries [see my review and my interview with pianist Deirdre Brenner].
- Best Original Score for Performance, music written for live performance: Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Lee Hall for their opera Festen, Richard Ayres for his theatrical journey into the inner workings of an orchestra No. 59 (Dr Frompou’s Anatomical Study of an Orchestra), and Bushra El-Turk’s music theatre work Oum – A Son’s Quest for his Mother.
- Best Original Documentary Score: Richard Collins and Patrick Jonsson for their score for A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough, Thomas Farnon for David Frost Vs…, Benjamin Kwasi Burrell for Grenfell: Uncovered, Jessica Dannheisser for The Last Musician of Auschwitz and Hannah Peel for Underland.
- Best Original Film Score: Ioana Șelaru and Siôn Trefor for their soundtrack to Welsh drama film Effi O Blaenau, combining acoustic instruments, synthesisers and vocals. Daniel Pemberton and Oliver Coates for their scores to Project Hail Mary and The History of Sound respectively.
- Best Original Television Score: Carly Paradis for her soundtrack to ITVX true crime series Believe Me, Siôn Trefor for the Netflix thriller Legends and Patrick Jonsson for BBC comedy-drama series Mint.
- Best Original Video Game Score: The Flight (Alexis Smith and Joe Henson) for 007 First Light, Sam Slater for Saros and Pav Gekko is for Spirit of the North 2.
