Philharmonia Orchestra announces 80th birthday season

The Philharmonia Orchestra has revealed details of its upcoming 80^th birthday season (25 September – 4 June). The season will feature music by Bruckner, Mahler, Berlioz, Ravel and Holst and new works from John Adams, Jonathan Dove, Fazil Say and featured composer Gabriela Ortiz, plus the revival of an all-Strauss programme last conducted by Richard Strauss himself in 1947. The orchestra also celebrates this milestone with the launch of brand-new project Philharmonia Social.

The Philharmonia Orchestra marks its 80^th birthday with the expansion of its Orchestra Unwrapped schools programme to 80 schools across the UK, while the new Philharmonia Social project will see the orchestra offer 80 free tickets for first-timers at every single London season concert in the 2025-26 season. The orchestra has also organised a busy programme of 80 live and virtual reality pop-ups all over the UK as well as a new Philharmonia debates… series of free pre-concert discussions linked to the programme of the concert it precedes.

The Philharmonia’s featured artist for the 2025-26 season is pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. He will perform with the Orchestra throughout the London season, as well as accompanying the Philharmonia to Amsterdam, Vienna, and across the United States as part of their first major US tour since the pandemic. The tour culminates in two performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, marking 70 years since the Philharmonia’s first performance there in 1955. Further tours will see the Philharmonia visit Korea in December and travel across Europe in January with Santtu-Matias Rouvali and violinist Hilary Hahn.

Elsewhere in the season principal guest conductor Marin Alsop conducts a world premiere orchestral version of Laura Karpman’s opera Balls, telling the story of the Battle of the Sexes tennis match of 1973, and visual artists Gilbert and George present an evening of music and art addressing life’s big topics - Sex, Money, Race, Religion - linked to a major retrospective of their work at the Hayward Gallery. The orchestra’s 2025-26 artist in residence is award-winning dance company Thick and Tight.

As well as collaborations with classical figures from Sir Donald Runnicles and Evgeny Kissin to Christian Lindberg and Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, the orchestra will also join forces with guests from the world of rock in a ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ concert conducted by principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, who taps into his past as a rock drummer.

To close the season, Rouvali recreates with pianist Benjamin Grosvenor an all-Strauss concert originally conducted in 1947 by Richard Strauss himself which brings together Don Juan, Burleske, Symphonia Domestica and Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier.