<\/p>\n
Keith Urban <\/a>is leading the search for the next Australian country music superstar.<\/p>\n The Australia-raised country great has partnered with the Tamworth Country Music Festival for the Keith Urban Rising Star Scholarship, which will invite an artist from Down Under to experience life in the home of country, Nashville.<\/p>\n More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n The recipient will receive \u201cunprecedented access\u201d to Nashville\u2019s music scene, including an opportunity to perform, write, meet industry personnel and have two days of recording time at Urban\u2019s studio, The Sound.<\/p>\n The winner will have all expenses covered, including flights and accommodation.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes\u00a0all a\u00a0musician needs is\u00a0an opportunity to be heard\u00a0or\u00a0someone to help\u00a0nurture\u00a0their talent,\u201d comments Urban.\u00a0\u201cHaving the opportunity to do that not only inspires me,\u00a0I\u2019m hoping that in some way this scholarship will serve to inspire others.\u201d<\/p>\n Urban has a career-long connection with the Tamworth Country Music Festival, which began in his early days busking, and flourished when he won the Star Maker competition, aged 22. He has gone on to win 15 Golden Guitar Awards, and earlier this year<\/a> was presented with the Roll of Renown, for his \u201cextraordinary creative contributions to the Australasian country music industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Australia has no shortage of country talent, from ARIA Hall of Famer Kasey Chambers, to Brad Cox, Troy Cassar-Daley, and the late, great Slim Dusty. The country\u2019s music scene is ranked No. 3 in the world behind the US and Canada, according to data published<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Luminate<\/a>, which, based on streams for the first half of 2023, found that Aussies clicked play on country music 1.1 billion times during that period, based on the top 500 songs in the genre.<\/p>\n A new report from Live Nation, \u201cStep Into Country\u201d, found that country has lassoed<\/a> new fans in Gen Z.<\/p>\n Applications for the Rising Star Scholarship will be managed through an online submission platform at tcmf.com.au<\/a>, which will launch in January 2026.<\/p>\n The project is unveiled as Urban, winner of four Grammy Awards, thirteen CMAs (including two for Entertainer of the Year), fifteen ACMs, three AMAs, 6 ARIA Awards and 15 Golden Guitar Awards, this week<\/a> embarks on his first tour of Australia since 2022.<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Keith Urban is leading the search for the next Australian country music superstar. The Australia-raised country great has partnered with the Tamworth Country Music Festival for the Keith Urban Rising Star Scholarship, which will invite an artist from Down Under to experience life in the home of country, Nashville. More from Billboard The recipient will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1968231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22846,310298,349137],"class_list":["post-1968230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-country-music","tag-keith-urban","tag-rising-star"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Keith-Urban-Launches-\u2018Rising-Star-Scholarship-For-Next-Generation-of.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1968230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1968231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1968230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1968230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1968230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}