Elevated Tracks 305, the citywide songwriting competition built around a simple dare, write Miami's first official anthem, has named six winners out of 135 submissions and more than 3,800 public votes. Three of them are still in middle school.

Miami has produced more musical exports than almost any American city, from Miami bass to the reggaeton acts filling Kaseya Center this year, yet it has never formally adopted an anthem the way New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco can point to as unmistakably their own. Elevated Tracks 305 was built to close that gap. According to the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, the contest launched in March as a partnership with Guitars Over Guns and Elevate Cities, co-chaired by Gloria and Emilio Estefan alongside Grammy winning writers Jon Secada, Rudy Pérez and Rico Love. Organizers built in a $10,000 first place prize along with citywide and national promotion for winning tracks. Miami New TimesMiami New Time

Soleil River Nation leads Elevated Tracks 305's youngest class of winners

The youth category's top vote getter is 12-year-old Soleil River Nation, a Miami Beach based multi-instrumentalist whose entry, "Miami On My Tongue," took first place. River Nation has built a small but real profile ahead of this win, including a stint with the Grammy winning National Children's Chorus and an earlier single recorded with YMU Studio, the recording arm of Young Musicians Unite. Second place in the youth bracket went to 11-year-old Abigail Fundora, who performs as Abi-G, for "La Gringa Tiene Tumbao." Third went to Skye Sconiers, 11, who records as Skye Aria, for "DALE 305." All three songs are streaming now on YouTube under each artist's channel, giving the contest a built in, ready to embed video component that most local competitions never get.

Guitars Over Guns and Frost School judges pick three adult category winners

The adult category drew its own range. Harold Valderrama, who records as V12, took first place with "RUMBA." Hussein J. Abdala, featuring veteran Miami songwriter Carlos Oliva, placed second with "Miami Es Miami (305 Edition)." Third place went to the father daughter duo Marti and Leah Dibut for "Dance in Miami." The judging panel leaned on people with decades in the room: Frost School faculty, peermusic executive Julio Bagué and Guitars Over Guns founder Chad Bernstein, whose organization has said it has spent close to 20 years helping young Miami musicians find a voice, a claim that lines up with the youth category's presence in this contest. Winners were determined through a combined jury and public vote, with the vote count made public rather than left to organizers' discretion, a detail that separates this from most branded songwriting contests.

None of the six songs has been declared Miami's official anthem, and the release announcing these winners does not claim that either. What organizers have promised is promotion through the rest of 2026, which means the real test for Elevated Tracks 305 starts now: whether any of these six tracks, written by a merengue producer, a father daughter pair or an 11-year-old, actually catches on beyond the contest that made them. For a city with this much musical output and no anthem to show for it, that's still an open question, and for now it belongs to six songwriters who answered a call most working artists never get asked.

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