Vadim Repin was born in Novosibirsk in 1971. He began playing the violin at the age of five and made his stage debut six months later. His mentor was the renowned teacher Zakhar Bron. At the age of eleven, he won the gold medal at the International Wieniawski Competition and made his debut in Moscow and Leningrad. At the age of 14 he toured Tokyo, Munich, Berlin and Helsinki and made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York a year later. In 1989, he gained international recognition as the youngest winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and 20 years later he himself became a member of the competition's jury. 

Vadim Repin performs in the world's greatest concert halls; his stage partners include Martha Argerich, Cecilia Bartoli, Yuri Bashmet, Mikhail Pletnev, Nikolai Lugansky, Evgeny Kissin, Misha Maisky and Lang Lang, among many others. He plays with the world's leading orchestras under the baton of conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yuri Bashmet, Semyon Bychkov, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Charles Dutoit, James Conlon, Alexander Lazarev, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Kent Nagano, Kirill Petrenko, Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Spivakov, Yuri Temirkanov, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Myung-whun Chung, Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Jurowski, Neeme Järvi and Paavo Järvi. 

He is the founder and artistic director of the Trans-Siberian Art Festival, which took place for the first time in Novosibirsk in 2014 and has developed into one of the most important international festivals in just twelve years. Since 2016 the festival has been expanded to other Russian cities (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Samara) as well as Israel, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Austria, France, Japan and Korea. 

The programme includes classical music, ballet, documentary films, jazz, folklore, crossover, visual arts and educational projects for creative young people. Vadim Repin has premiered works by Sofia Gubaidulina, James MacMillan, Benjamin Yusupov, Lera Auerbach, Ilya Demutskiy, Mikhail Pletnev, Kuzma Bodrov, Anatoly Korolev and others. 

He is a regular guest at festivals in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Gstaad, Rheingau, Verbier, Dubrovnik, Menton and Cortona. His discography includes more than 30 albums, many of which have been awarded the Echo Award, the Diapason d'Or, the Prix Caecilia and the Edison Award. Vadim Repin is a recipient of the prestigious French Victoire d'Honneur, awarded for outstanding achievements in the arts, and Chevalier des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. 

He plays a Nicolò Amati (1664) violin.