Overview

The Aga Khan Music Awards were established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 2018. The Awards recognise and support exceptional creativity, promise, and enterprise in music performance, creation, education, preservation and revitalisation in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence.

The first Music Awards ceremony, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal in March 2019, co-hosted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Lisbon Municipality, brought together a constellation of the world’s leading musical talents from the Muslim world.

Award recipients share a prize fund of USD $500,000, as well as opportunities for professional development. These opportunities include commissions for the creation of new works, contracts for recordings and artist management, support for pilot education initiatives, and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation, and dissemination projects.