ABOTMA Announces The 2026 Songwriting Competition.
The ABOTMA Songwriting competition is back in 2026. We’re excited to encourage artists to explore their unique sound and share their stories. While ABOTMA is dedicated to keeping Bluegrass and Old Timey music alive and vibrant, we don’t see it as just a collection of old tunes.
The winner will receive $500 in cash, the runner-up will get $100 and there’s a chance to perform your songs at Mountaingrass 2026 in November. Plus, the winner and runner-up get a season pass to the 2026 Mountaingrass Festival.
These prizes are thanks to the wonderful sponsorship of Performance Advantage, a company that helps small businesses with HR. Suzanne Diprose, the Director, will be presenting them at Mountaingrass.
The first winner was Karen Lynne in 2024 with her song Out There on The Road, and Ben Thomas was the runner-up. Karen even got to perform it with her band, The Louis Family, at Mountaingrass in 2025. The 2025 winner was Emily Ryan with Unfold, and Liz Frencham was the runner-up.
You can enter from July to September 2026, and you can find all the details on the Mountaingrass website.
About The ABOTMA Songwriting Competition.
The ABOTMA Songwriting competition was started by Suzanne Diprose, the director of Peformance Advantage in 2024. Suzanne started the competition to honour the creative song-writing endeavours of her awarding winning song-writing husband, Dave Dipose, with the intent of encouraging other artists to develop their own sound and story, and to further Bluegrass and Old-time traditions in a contemporary context.
ABOTMA supports this initiative with technical support for the applications lodged, provision of the festival passes for the winner and runner up. One of the ultimate aims of the competition is that it become self-funding through the collection of the songwriting competition entry fees.
In 2024 a prize of $500 cash was offered to the winner by Performance Advantage and Dave Diprose offered $100 cash to the runner-up. The prizes were presented on stage at the Mountaingrass Festival in 2024 by Suzanne Diprose as the competition sponsor accompanied by Dave Diprose as competition Judge. Dave was assisted in 2025 in judging the competition by mult-award winning songwriter Pete Denahy.
The prize presentations were followed by performances of the winning songs. Karen Lynne performed her winning song ‘Out There On The Road’ with her husband Martin Louis and her son William Louis. Ben Thomas performed his song wiht Paul Abrahams backing him on double bass.
In 2025 a prize of $500 cash was again offered to the winner by Performance Advantage and ABOTMA provided $100 cash to the runner-up from competition entry fee proceeds. The prizes were presented at the Mountaingrass Festival in 2025 by Suzanne Diprose as the competition sponsor accompanied by Dave Diprose as competition Judge. Dave was again assisted in 2025 in judging the competition by mult-award winning songwriter Pete Denahy.
The prize presentations were followed by performances of the winning songs. Emmy Ryan performed her winning song Unfold solo followed by Liz Frencham who also performed solo with her song Restless.
