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Musikfest Berlin

Key visual Musikfest Berlin 2026

Major Orchestras and Vocal Ensembles as Guests in Berlin

Advance ticket sales for first concert highlights are open

First Concert Highlights 2026

Musikfest Berlin will take place from 28 August to 23 September 2026 in co-operation with the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation and marks the 75th anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele. Tickets are already available now for ten selected concert highlights at the Philharmonie Berlin. These guest concerts include some of the world’s best symphony orchestras and choirs from Finland, Spain, England, South Africa, the USA, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. 

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Helsinki Chamber Choir conducted by Nicholas Collon will open Musikfest Berlin 2026 with a concert performance of György Ligeti’s anti-opera Le Grand Macabre. George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess will be presented by the Chineke! Orchestra, the Cape Town Opera Chorus and the conductor Kwamé Ryan. The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Jörg Widmann will tackle Wolfgang Rihm’s irrepressible Artaud ritual Tutuguri. Two leading ensembles for historically informed performance practice, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle and the Ensemble Le Concert des Nations with Jordi Savall, will present guest concerts with music by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelsohn. In addition to the WDR Sinfonieorchester with Kent Nagano and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra with Alan Gilbert, the Vienna Philharmonic with Tugan Sokhiev, the Kansas City Symphony with Matthias Pintscher and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano are also awaited at Musikfest Berlin 2026. 

The complete festival programme will be announced on 21 April 2026.

To the programme

Early Booking Offer

Combine a minimum of five concerts and save 20 % in comparison to individual ticket prices. The offer includes all normal prices and reduced rates in all price categories and closes on 31 January 2026. The minimum of five concerts per package must be combined and booked within the framework of a single payment process.

Purchase package

Impressions 2025

  • A man conducts an orchestra and raises his hands.

    Klaus Mäkela and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • Many people are moving around in a foyer, with the poster for the 2025 Berlin Music Festival visible in the background.

    The foyer of the Philharmonie Berlin during the opening concert

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A woman and a man with a violin, dressed in black concert attire, hold hands, laugh joyfully and raise their hands.

    Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Antoine Tamestit during the final applause

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A man in a black suit with his eyes closed raises both hands in the air.

    Lahav Shani at the Munich Philharmonic’s additional concert

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • View from the side of the audience onto the stage, where orchestra musicians, a violin soloist and a conductor are performing.

    Additional concert by the Munich Philharmonic

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • man with a baton in his raised hand stands in front of the orchestra’s string section.

    Daniel Harding conducts the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • You see a woman standing on stage conducting from behind. To her left are two harps and to her right are two harps.

    Ustina Dubitsky conducts Berlioz’ „Symphonie fantastique“

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A woman with her eyes closed holds a violin in her hand, behind her stands a woman conducting the orchestra.

    Isabelle Faust interprets Beethoven’s violin concerto

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • There are 30 singers on stage, with a conductor in front of them. The hall is dark with a few bright and red lighting accents.

    The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin sings Pärt and Palestrina

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • An old man with a white beard holds a large score in his hand and looks expectantly past the camera on the right.

    Helmut Lachenmann rehearsing with the Ensemble Modern

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A fully occupied concert hall with a large orchestra and a grand piano on stage.

    The RSB performs Lachenmann’s piano concerto “Ausklang”

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Stefan Maria Rother

  • Three men in suits stand in front of the orchestra on stage, holding hands.

    Helmut Lachenmann with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Vladimir Jurowski

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Stefan Maria Rother

  • Around 15 people perform together on stage: singers, musicians with string instruments and harps, and a conductor.

    German premiere: the vocal ensemble Les Cris de Paris

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • In the foreground, you can see the blurred body of the viola da gamba, and in the background, the upper part of the viola da gamba with the pegbox and a decorative scroll, in this case a face.

    Viola da gamba at the concert by Les Cris de Paris

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A woman in black concert attire sings passionately with a desperate expression on her face.

    Visiting from Odessa: The Senza Sforzando Ensemble

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A fair-haired woman in long black clothing sits at the piano, her right hand on the keys, her left hand in front of her face.

    Tamara Stefanovich performs Rebecca Saunders' piano concerto.

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • Two women smile at each other warmly.

    Tamara Stefanovich and Rebecca Saunders during rehearsals

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A man plays the horn while the man behind him stands at the conductor’s podium.

    Stefan Dohr interprets Esa-Pekka Salonen’s horn concerto

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • Bird’s-eye view of the stage: a large orchestra with a concert grand piano.

    Rehearsal of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • People with instruments in their hands stand close together and have long transparent sheets over their heads.

    Stegreif – The Improvising Symphony Orchestra

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A man with a contrabass clarinet lies in the dark on the stage, something glittering spurting out of the instrument.

    Stegreif – The Improvising Symphony Orchestra

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

Hidden object image of Paris, featuring composers and musicians

Hidden Objects 2025

The music metropolis of Paris is depicted in the poster that illustrator AlexandraKlobouk has designed for Musikfest Berlin 2025. Here she has hidden images of 27 characters for you to find, each with close connections to this year’s festival. They include historical figures but also composers, singers, instrumentalists and conductors from the present day.

Klaus Mäkelä conducts the pigeons of Montmartre, Helmut Lachenmann converses with King Charles III, and Lisa Streich listens to the singing sculptures of the Stravinsky Fountain. Who will you discover?

Read more about the many anecdotes you can find hidden in the poster in our multimedia Story.

DownloadHidden Objects as a PDF

To the Story

Musikfest Berlin in the Media Library

Hear musicians and conductors in conversation or read interviews with composers such as Lisa Streich, Milica Djordjević and Olga Neuwirth. On-demand offers from previous years are also available.

To the Berliner Festspiele Media Library
Visual Berliner Festspiele Media Library

About Musikfest Berlin

Musikfest Berlin sees itself as a forum for the innovative creative work carried out by large-scale orchestras and ensembles in the genre of classical and modern music. It presents an ambitious festival programme with alternating focal points.

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