As we head towards the last couple of weeks of the year, we wanted to finish with a round-up of what happened in 2025, some important dates for your calendars and a new playlist created in collaboration with music tastemaker Charlotte Ryan.

It’s been another mammoth year for the NZ On Air Music team – including 15 funding rounds, 12 NewTracks compilations, with 1,110 funding applications and 289 NZ On Air Music funding grants to help artists record, create visual content, promote local music, and tour their projects.

This year, we also introduced the brand-new pilot fund New Music Project Touring, with support from the NZ Music Commission, to help artists take their music and projects on the road.

This first pilot round attracted strong interest from the music community, with 36 applications and 20 artists receiving funding – and we’re so pleased to be able to bring it back for another round of funding in April 2026.

The feedback from this pilot round has been incredibly positive and the team is really pleased to give even more audiences across the motu the opportunity to experience new music live.

Year in Review

In October, NZ On Air also released the Year In Review 2024-2025. This gives a great overview of everything the agency has undertaken over the past financial year, the Screen, Music and Games content that was funded, and the impact it had with audiences across Aotearoa and beyond.

If you haven’t already, check out the Music section which details the number of singles that were supported across 14 funding rounds and the New Music Project grants.

You can also find a selection of awesome success stories from across all our funding rounds.

Go here to see the Year In Review 2024-2025.

Important Dates

Funding Dates

• New Music Project and New Music Project Kids funding opens today on Thursday 11 December 2025 and closes 4pm Thursday 29 January 2026. Expressions of interest should be emailed to project@nzonair.govt.nz
• New Music Single opens today on Thursday 11 December 2025, with the deadline for the round on 4pm Thursday 15 January 2026.
• You can see all our 2026 NZ On Air Music Funding dates here.

Payment Dates

• Last payments for 2025 will be made on Thursday 18 December.
• All paperwork for this payment round needs to be received by 5pm Monday 15 December.
• First payments for 2026 will be on Thursday 15 January.

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