Singer-songwriter Victoria Canal won the Rising Star award at the 2023 edition of the prestigious Ivor Novellos, which celebrates the craft of songwriters, composers and creators. Past Rising Star winners and nominees include Mysie, Griff, Willow Kayne, Rachel Chinouriri, Naomi Kimpenu and Holly Humberstone, with Victoria Canal following in their steps as a breakout artist primed for greatness.

The judges complimented Canal’s “powerful songwriting and compelling sound”, while Victoria dedicated her award to teachers and mentors, adding, “I really could have used seeing someone like me on stage growing up and I never did so it’s truly an honour to think that someone else who feels different out there knows that it’s possible.”

She’ll be announcing new music with ‘Shape’ and ‘She Walks In’, due for release on 1st June via Parlophone Records; the first songs Victoria has directly written about the themes of body image and body dysmorphia relating to her limb difference.

Following her own headline UK/EU tour last year, this summer Victoria supports Hozier on this UK and Europe show this June and July, including a huge outdoor show at London’s Alexandra Palace Park. See below for full list of dates, tickets on sale now.

Last year Canal released her EP Elegy, which delicately dealt with themes of grief and death, and featured the single ‘Swan Song’, which Chris Martin of Coldplay hailed as ‘one of the best songs ever written’. She performed ‘Swan Song‘ on the recent series of Later With Jools Holland, appearing alongside the likes of Self Esteem and The 1975.

24 year-old singer, songwriter, producer and activist Victoria Canal makes soul-stirring, emotive pop music. Born in Munich, Spanish-American Canal says her international upbringing fostered her love for a nomadic life in music. A proud “third culture kid,” she lived everywhere from Shanghai, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, and Dubai to Atlanta, New York, and Forth Worth, and is proud of her identity as a queer, disabled, mixed-heritage woman, which fuels much of her activism.

Canal last year made her television acting debut in acclaimed Apple TV+ anthology series Little America, starring in the season’s moving episode The Indoor Arm as a Spanish-speaking Salvadorian refugee in the 80s who comes to America to live with her sister. She also wrote ‘Bring It On’, the theme song for Apple TV+ series Best Foot Forward, based on the book by Paralympic skier Josh Sundquist.