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I know these judgements are subjective, just as the competitions themselves are, but I wanted to see if there's some consensus as to what the top 5 piano competitions are. Is it possible to rank them in terms of prestige?

Two that stand out are the Chopin Competition and the Van Cliburn. I think both of these would qualify for the top 5.

The Tchaikovksy as well!

I'm not sure about the international scene, but the ones I tend to hear most about here in the US are:

Cliburn, Bachauer, NOIPC, Hilton Head, Cleveland, Naumburg, and YCA.

There are also two awards that, while not really competitions, give awards to deserving pianists to help start their careers - The American Pianists Association classical and jazz fellowship awards, and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival artist awards. Both have chosen many familiar faces - Sean Chen is the current APA classical fellow (I get to hear him in Chicago in July!) and past Gilmore awards have gone to Yuja Wang, Conrad Tao, Adam Golka, Jonathan Biss, etc... Past APA fellows include Stephen Beus, Michael Sheppard, Brian Ganz, Ning An, Diane Hidy, etc...

No, that one I haven't heard of.

I think you could add to the list the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition and the Queen Elisabeth (Belgium) competition.

Leeds past winners include :
Sunwook Kim
Jon Kimura Parker
Ian Hobson
Dimitri Alexeev
Murray Perahia
Radu Lupu
Rafael Orozco
Lars Vogt (2nd)
Mitsuko Uchida (2nd)
Andras Schiff (3rd)
Lydia Artymiw (3rd)

Queen Elisabeth past winners include :
Emil Gilels
Leon Fleisher
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Malcolm Frager
Moura Lympany (2nd)
Karl Engel (2ns)
John Browning (2nd)
Evgeni Bozhanov (2nd)
Maria Tipo (3rd)
Youri Egorov (3rd)
Anton Kuerti (4th)

Regards,

Tchaik and Chopin are the most noteworthy in my opinion. The only notable Cliburn winners I can think of, off the top of my head, are Sultanov and Lupu.

I would say:

Queen Elisabeth
Tchaikovsky
Leeds
Van Cliburn
Chopin

The Gilmore prize rivals in value any of the awards given out in these competitions, but the Gilmore is an odd duck in that you can't apply for it or perform in it publicly.

One way to rate piano competitions is to see how many winners become household names in the pianistic world.

Using this criteria, I'd say that the Chopin and Tchaikovsky are the top ones.
Past winners of the Chopin: Pollini, Argerich, Ohlsson, Zimerman, Dang Thai Son, Yundi Li...
Past winners of the Tchaikovsky: Van C. , Vladimir Ashkenazy, John Ogdon, Grigory Sokolov (aged 16!), John Lill, Andrei Gavrilov, Mikhail Pletnev, Barry Douglas, Boris Berezovsky, Nikolai Lugansky, Denis Matsuev...

Between the two of them, we already have almost all of the big names of the past 50 years.

Besides those mentioned, I'd say the Busoni is still going strong after all these years, even though they have the odd quirk of frequently not awarding a first prize. There are some interesting names in their jury for this August's finals:

Peter Donohoe, chairman
Josef Bulva
Sa Chen
Unsuk Chin
Martha de Francisco
Filippo Gamba
Markus Hinterhäuser
Hilde Limondjian
Steven Osborne
Francesco Piemontesi
Roland Pöntinen

Since 1992 there has been a piano competition every three years in Calgary, Alberta called the Esther Honens (www.honens.com). It now claims to have the largest keyboard purse in the world, offering the first prize winner $100,000CDN and another half-million dollars in a 3-year sponsorship of recordings, touring, etc.

It's now a player in the competition game.

I see a few prominent piano names among winners since the Honens began: Sergei Babayan, Maxim Philippov, and Minsoo Sohn.

In this article by Dallas music critic Wayne Lee Gay on the 2013 Cliburn, he says:

"And even the appearance of jury partiality can not be permitted at the Cliburn if that event is to maintain its role as the leading piano competition in the world."

I noted that he referred to the Cliburn as "the leading" instead of "a leading" piano competition in the world. Is he just being parochial?

AND presumptuous.

Well, you know: Texas. They seem to specialize in this sort of stuff out there; it's like the regional narrative. For example, we've been informed that the Fort Worth Symphony is one of the world's great orchestras, too. Who knew?

Ironically, they have a phrase in Texas that describes this kind of bellicosity - they say "all hat, no cattle".