Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition 2020 finalists announced

Glastonbury Festival is excited to announce the eight finalists of its 2020 Emerging Talent Competition, which is supported by PRS for Music and PRS Foundation.

The eight acts have been whittled down from thousands of entries received in January. The finalists are:

• AJIMAL
• Courting
• Frankie Beetlestone
• HANNIE
• Joshua Burnside
• Kathleen Frances
• Matilda Mann
• R.A.E

The winners of the free-to-enter competition will be offered a slot on one of the main stages at Glastonbury 2021. They will also be awarded a £5,000 Talent Development prize from PRS Foundation to help take their songwriting and performing to the next level. Two runners-up will also each be awarded a £2,500 PRS Foundation Talent Development prize.

There will be no live finals this year, for obvious reasons. Instead, the winners will be selected by our usual team of live finals judges using the song and live video each act entered with. Look out for an announcement soon!

There were so many great acts on the longlist, and narrowing it down from 90 acts to 8 certainly wasn’t an easy task. But I’m really happy with the finalists we have, and I very much hope that people will take the time to check them all out.

The standard has been extremely high this year, so a big congratulations to the finalists for getting to this stage. We are looking forward to the final round of judging and helping to support the winner and runners-up. We also can’t wait to see them all perform live in the near future. Good luck to all involved.

Congratulations to all the finalists of this year’s Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition. Yet again the standard of the shortlisted music creators is incredibly high and it will be an exciting and lively judging panel to decide the winners and runners-up. Best of luck to all eight artists.

About PRS for Music

PRS for Music is a world-leading music collective management organisation representing the rights of more than 180,000 talented songwriters, composers and music publishers. Redefining the global standard for music royalties, PRS for Music ensures songwriters and composers are paid whenever their musical compositions and songs are streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed and played in public.  

For more than 110 years it has grown and protected the rights of the music creator community, paying out royalties with more accuracy, transparency and speed. In 2024, PRS for Music paid out £1.02 billion in royalties and collected a record £1.15 billion in revenues.

About PRS Foundation

Since 2000 PRS Foundation has given more than £44 million to over 8,500 new music initiatives. 9 out of 12 Mercury Prize 2022 nominees had received PRS Foundation support (including the winner Little Simz) and the charity has supported BRITS, RPS, AIM and Ivors Award-winners.

PRS Foundation supports outstanding talent from all backgrounds, covering the whole of the UK and all genres, with grantee success stories including Little Simz, Wolf Alice, Dave, Sam Fender, Years & Years, AJ Tracey, Anna Meredith, Yola, Glass Animals, Ezra Collective, Jade Bird, Ghetts, Shiva Feshareki, Sarathy Korwar, Floating Points, Nadine Shah, The Fanatix, Imogen Heap, IDLES, Kae Tempest, Kojey Radical and Emily Burns.

Widely respected as an inclusive, collaborative and proactive funding body, PRS Foundation supports an exceptional range of new music activity through direct grants to music creators and through support for pioneering organisations, including venues, festivals, promoters and other talent development organisations. PRS Foundation founded the Women Make Music fund, co-founded global gender equality initiative, Keychange and most recently launched the POWER UP initiative to tackle anti-Black racism in music. www.prsfoundation.com