World Championship old-time piano contest returns to Oxford in 2026
Oxford’s Memorial Day weekend will again bring ragtime pianists downtown, along with visitors who fill hotel rooms, restaurant tables and Square businesses.
Oxford’s Memorial Day weekend will once again belong to ragtime pianists, but the bigger story may play out offstage, in hotel lobbies, at downtown restaurants and around the Historic Oxford Square. The World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival returns May 21-24, bringing a nationally known tradition back to the University of Mississippi and reinforcing Oxford’s identity as a place that can turn a niche art form into repeat tourism.
The contest has been hosted at Ole Miss since 2016, and the university describes it as a forum for pianists to compete, learn and help educate people about old-time piano music written before 1940. It began in 1975 as a fundraiser for the Monticello, Illinois Railway Museum and has since drawn more than 1,200 contestants from across the United States and abroad, giving Oxford a cultural event with reach far beyond Lafayette County.
The 2026 festival will again feature four divisions: New Rag for original compositions, along with Junior, Senior and Regular contests. Founder Ted Lemen will emcee the event, and special guests will include Jeff Barnhart, Brian Holland, Julie McClarey, Paul Orsi and Bobby van Deusen. The program is built around guest artist performances, presentations, a catered luncheon with live music, a silent movie luncheon, a youth master class and after-hours events that keep the Square busy well into the evening.
Festival activity begins Thursday, May 22, at 7 p.m. at The Old Henry just off the Historic Oxford Square. Friday will include tours of town, guest artist presentations and the New Rag Contest, while Saturday will bring the Regular, Junior and Senior divisions. Evening events at The Old Henry will carry a $15 cover charge, a detail that puts the weekend’s draw squarely in the downtown economy as well as the concert hall.
The event’s scale helps explain why Oxford continues to host it. Ole Miss marked the contest’s 50th anniversary in 2024, when contestants ranged in age from 11 to 83 and came from across the U.S., Great Britain, France and Japan. That same year, the contest offered a record $10,000 in cash prizes. The university later said the competition had distributed more than $70,000 in prizes to more than 500 performers from the United States and five other countries.
For Oxford, the contest is more than a performance calendar item. It is a Memorial Day weekend institution that ties campus, downtown and visiting audiences together in one annual burst of music, traffic and spending, while giving the city another reason to stand out as a place where heritage arts still matter.
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