Amaranthe, Belgium at the Awards Ceremony in Flanders © Jonas Persson

These choirs are among the best in the world

Update of the INTERKULTUR World Rankings after the 11th World Choir Games

World Rankings

Rarely has the preparation for the World Choir Games competitions been more difficult for choirs than in 2021. After a long period of limited rehearsal opportunities, the competition results of this year were all the more valuable and made the singers prouder than ever before.

Of course, also this year the results from the competitions have been included into the INTERKULTUR World Rankings and they show some interesting changes. In particular, the success of choirs from Belgium is especially striking:

With a score of a fabulous 98.38 points in the category " Vocal Ensembles & Chamber Choirs of Equal Voices", the Belgian choir Amaranthe under the direction of Johannes Dewilde was the most successful in the whole competition and achieved one of the best-ever results in the history of the World Choir Games to date – close to the current World Record of 99 points, achieved by the current no. 1 in the World Rankings, the Stellenbosch University Choir, at the 8th World Choir Games in Riga in 2014.

On top of their first success, Amaranthe became also the Champion in the "Musica Contemporanea" category and this achievement was rightly rewarded: Amaranthe now enters the list of the TOP 1000 choirs with the 6th place, and even ranks 1st place in the list of the 50 best "Chamber Choirs & Vocal Ensembles". A great result!

Likewise, the Belgian Jeugdkoor Waelrant under the direction of Marleen De Boo was also remarkably successful. With their double Championship in the "Youth Choirs" and "Musica Sacra with Accompaniment" categories and a score of 93 points in the last-mentioned category, Jeugdkoor Waelrant rose in the World Ranking of the 1000 best choirs from place 135 to place 15, and spectacularly jumped in the individual category ranking of "Sacred Music & Music of Religions" from place 48 to 5.

The most successful international choir at the World Choir Games 2021 was the Bulgarian Vocal Ensemble "Fortissimo" under the direction of Milena Dobreva. With two victories in the categories  "Mixed Vocal Ensembles & Chamber Choirs" (also with 93 points) and "Folklore a cappella" , the choir was able to rise in the World Ranking from number 41 to 13. They also rose in the individual category list of the 50 best choirs in "Folklore" to rank 8.

You can have a look into the updated World Rankings here:

INTERKULTUR World Rankings

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