2025/26 – Our 80th birthday season

Thank you for joining us for our 80th birthday season!  

With a year of landmark performances, bold collaborations and unforgettable music-making, we’ve celebrated our 80th anniversary with our season theme of Music and Identity.

“This orchestra raises the roof with their sound. We left very inspired.” Audience member 

Santtu led our birthday celebrations across the globe

In London, our UK Residencies, as well as on tour in the USA, Mauritius, Korea and Europe, we celebrated 80 years by looking back on our extraordinary history and looking ahead to the future. From symphonic favourites and major new commissions to immersive projects and community activity, the season showed what the Philharmonia is all about: sharing great music as widely and imaginatively as possible.

Santtu was at the centre of the our 80th birthday season, leading performances that combined intensity, imagination and sweep. Across the year he collaborated with soloists including Víkingur Ólafsson, Alena Baeva and Frank Dupree, conducted repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Bernstein, and led the orchestra on a major US tour culminating at Carnegie Hall. His recreation of Richard Strauss’s legendary 1947 Philharmonia concert concluded was a mighty and fitting close to our celebratory year.

Our Featured Artist and Composer thrilled audiences

Our Featured Artist, Víkingur Ólafsson, brought his distinctive brilliance and imagination to the season, from Beethoven to the UK premiere of John Adams’s After the Fall, as well as a special concert celebrating the 100th birthday of Víkingur’s mentor, the composer György Kurtág at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Our Featured Composer Gabriela Ortiz also left a vivid mark on the year, with her music featured across the season in performances that celebrated her bold, colourful musical voice.

“…fabulous, ear-drenching magnificence.” The Telegraph’s review of Víkingur’s performance of ‘After the Fall’

We forged new collaborations across art forms

We collaborated with the visual artists Gilbert & George, explored the meeting point of sport and opera in Laura Karpman’s tennis-inspired opera Balls, conducted by our Principal Guest Conductor Marin Alsop, and brought together heavy metal and orchestral sound in Forged in Sound with guests including Mr Lordi, Alison Mosshart and Suzi Quatro. These ambitious projects captured the adventurous spirit of our 80th birthday season.

We reached out to new audiences

Our 80th birthday season was about more than what happened on stage. Through Philharmonia Social, we opened up new ways to experience the concert hall, from free tickets for first-time attenders, to pop-ups, our series of debates, as well as conversations and opportunities to connect our audiences with players.  

We celebrated our past conductors 

On YouTube, we interviewed many of the legendary figures of the Philharmonia’s past and present, including Christoph von Dohnányi, our Principal Conductor between 1997 and 2008, who sadly passed away in September. We were proud to dedicate a concert to his memory, which included Strauss’s Four Last Songs, a work Dohnányi conducted with the Philharmonia on numerous occasions. With its message of peace and gratitude for a life well lived, it stands as a fitting tribute to a cherished friend and colleague.

We launched a new immersive virtual reality experience

Building on over 15 years of innovation in digital experiences, and supported by Innovate UK, the Virtual Orchestra: William Tell experience was launched in May, with over 700 participants of all ages playing in the heart of the orchestra as they perform Rossini’s exhilarating overture. 

Designed with children and young people at its core, the experience allows users to pick up a virtual instrument, learn through guided tutorials, and perform as part of the orchestra.

The project marks the next stage in the Philharmonia’s long-standing work in digital innovation, aiming to break down barriers between audiences and performers and open up new ways of engaging with classical music.

We brought music to thousands of children

We expanded Orchestra Unwrapped to work with more schools across the UK than ever before, introducing over 8,000 children to live orchestral music, and we continued to share our work internationally, including in Mauritius.

And we reached millions of you away from the concert hall

We continued to grow our reach through streaming, social media, and releases on our own Philharmonia Records label, including our 80th anniversary album, featuring Santtu conducting Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, as well as Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 and Moscow, Cheryomushki in a CD released in June 2026.

As this special anniversary season draws to a close, we want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has joined us in person, online, in schools, in communities and on tour.

We look forward to seeing you for our autumn 2026/27 concerts. Join us for stand-out performances by Santtu, Marin, and our new Featured Artists Sol Gabetta and Nobu Tsujii. Plus, don’t miss Nicola Benedetti with Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, and Herbert Blomstedt’s greatly anticipated return to the Philharmonia. Here’s to everything still to come.