More than $25 mil­lion in prize mon­ey was dis­trib­uted to over 150 steel bands from across Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the Pan Trin­ba­go Steel­band Cham­pi­ons Prize Dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny, held at the Radis­son Ho­tel.

And Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts has hint­ed about mov­ing the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion to a big­ger venue, per­haps the sta­di­um, be­cause of the num­ber of peo­ple ea­ger to at­tend the event.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young told the pan fra­ter­ni­ty that he hopes to re­turn as Prime Min­is­ter next month to as­sist the na­tion­al in­stru­ment move­ment.

"In fact, I am look­ing for­ward to the next cou­ple of years af­ter I come back in­to of­fice on the 28th of April. I look for­ward to be­ing able to join you at your an­nu­al award cer­e­mo­ny right across the road, where the gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to build­ing a per­ma­nent, mod­ern-day home for the steel pan and your move­ment, Pan Trin­ba­go," he said.

He is­sued a call to ac­tion to cor­po­rate T&T to step for­ward in greater num­bers, stat­ing that while the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to of­fer sup­port, sus­tain­able growth de­pends on part­ner­ships.

“That ex­tra mon­ey Bev­er­ly (Ram­sey-Moore) is ask­ing for — hold on. Be­cause I’ve said I will be re­spon­si­ble. We won’t put the gov­ern­ment in a po­si­tion where it can’t pay its bills,” he said. “Cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go must an­swer the call.”

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, was al­so at the prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny. 

He said, "To­day is tru­ly a good day for pan men and women. Over $25 mil­lion in prize mon­ey and re­mit­tances are be­ing dis­trib­uted to our steel­pan play­ers — a tes­ta­ment to the hard work, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and part­ner­ship be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Pan Trin­ba­go."

The na­tion­al land­scape is cur­rent­ly in elec­tion mode, and Min­is­ter Mitchell didn’t shy away from ad­dress­ing the po­lit­i­cal sea­son. He stat­ed, “I am a politi­cian, and yes, I would like to come back in­to of­fice. But I want you to think crit­i­cal­ly — not about emp­ty promis­es, but about lega­cy. Ask your­self what was re­al­ly done for the steel­pan move­ment be­fore 2015 and com­pare that to what we’ve built to­geth­er since.”

Re­fer­ring to Panora­ma 2025, Mitchell said “The crowds were mas­sive—up to 40,000 peo­ple for the se­mi-fi­nals alone."

“We saw peo­ple in the drag, the Grand­stand, the greens, and the North Stand, and that doesn’t even ac­count for those who couldn’t get tick­ets but want­ed to join us.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the over­whelm­ing de­mand for tick­ets and the ca­pac­i­ty lim­i­ta­tions of cur­rent venues, Mitchell laid out plans for fu­ture Panora­ma events to en­sure that even more fans can en­joy the world-renowned com­pe­ti­tion.

“Per­haps in 2026, we need to re­think the lo­gis­tics. We may need to ex­pand the space or con­sid­er in­stalling large screens so that peo­ple can en­joy the event even if they don’t have a di­rect view of the stage,” he said. “We could ex­plore build­ing a sta­di­um or even mov­ing in­to the na­tion­al sta­di­um. These are the good prob­lems to have.”

Mitchell em­pha­sized that such ex­pan­sion would help meet the de­mand from both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al spec­ta­tors ea­ger to wit­ness the cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non.

As part of the on­go­ing im­prove­ments, Mitchell urged the pub­lic to se­cure their tick­ets ear­ly for the 2026 event, en­sur­ing they don’t miss out on an­oth­er record-break­ing year.