PODIUM 2026

Podium is Choral Canada's national biennial bilingual choral conference and festival.

This multi-day celebration brings together participants from across the country and beyond who are passionate about group singing. Podium is the top meeting place for Canada's choral and group singing arts sector and community, creating space for networking, mobilizing knowledge through a variety of presentation formats, and nourishing the interest in group singing through exposure to new music, creative performances, and innovative practices.

The goals of Podium are to:

• celebrate group singing in Canada
• provide professional development, performance, research dissemination and networking opportunities for Canada’s choral community, and
• undertake choral advocacy initiatives to increase awareness of choral music and engage new participants.

• Connect the choral community: Podium provides a setting for participants to mobilize knowledge through networking; attend a variety of presentation formats such as research paper presentations, workshops, panel discussions, roundtable dialogues, poster sessions, conducting masterclasses, reading sessions, and lecture-recitals; sing with and for each other  
• Expand the choral community: Podium will expand current definitions of choral music by presenting diverse vocal ensembles; showcasing performances with varied musical genres; creating and engaging with other art forms; and growing audiences (public) from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and cultural groups
• Inspire the choral community: Podium inspires and ignites an interest in, and passion for, choral singing through exposure to new repertoire, innovative pedagogies, and creative performances; building awareness of the continuum of types of choral ensembles (from professional choirs to community-based vocal ensembles); and providing opportunities to develop excellence in choral technique.

The Festival component of Podium offers delegates and local audiences the opportunity to attend daytime and evening concerts, as well as free pop-up concerts across the host city and a choral marathon. Music composed by Canadian choral composers is highlighted throughout the Festival. The outstanding National Youth Choir of Canada perform the final concert of their tour at every Podium.

​Early Podium conferences (1982, 1984 and 1986) were held as part of existing provincial events in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia respectively. The first self-supporting conference, Podium East, was hosted by the New Brunswick Choral Federation and Mount Allison University Department of Music in Sackville, New Brunswick in 1988. While each conference has its own special flavour, focus and theme, the name Podium has been maintained since that time.

Previous Podiums have been held in:

1982 – Kingston, ON
1984 – Winnipeg, MB
1986 – Vancouver, BC
1988 – Sackville, NB
1990 – Calgary, AB
1992 – Waterloo, ON
1994 – Saskatoon, SK
1996 – Québec City, QC
1998 – Halifax, NS
2000 – Edmonton, AB
2002 – Toronto, ON
2004 – Winnipeg, MB
2006 – Victoria, BC
2008 – Sackville, NB
2010 – Saskatoon, SK
2012 – Ottawa, ON
2014 – Halifax, NS
2016 – Edmonton, AB
2018 – St. John's, NL
2020 – Montreal, QC (cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic)
2022 – Toronto, ON
2024 – Montreal, QC