Choral music and opera

Piano superstar Yunchan Lim joins Dalia Stasevska and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for Ravel’s bluesy Concerto in G major. We also hear music by Copland, Gershwin and Finzi, alongside a world premiere from French-British composer Josephine Stephenson

Gianandrea Noseda leads massed forces in Beethoven’s monumental ‘Choral’ Symphony. We also hear the UK premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s These Righteous Paths with South African cellist Abel Selaocoe

The Jupiter Ensemble makes its Proms debut with British tenor Laurence Kilsby in a programme celebrating two jewels of the English Renaissance and Baroque – John Dowland and Henry Purcell – as well as ‘honorary’ Englishman George Frideric Handel

For their first Prom of the 2026 season, Ryan Bancroft and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform spiritually charged works by Lili Boulanger, Szymanowski, Messiaen and Strauss, each reflecting on death and the afterlife

A mini choral convention, shining a spotlight on voices from the North East as well as on the BBC Singers, featuring a selection from Parry’s Songs of Farewell and Tavener’s heartrending Song for Athene

A fun workshop with Mary King to get you ready for vocal action at the Last Night singalong.

Marin Alsop becomes the first female conductor of the Last Night of the Proms. Joyce DiDonato and Nigel Kennedy join the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert that runs from Rossini and Handel arias to a mass singalong, and from Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and rarities by Britten and Bantock to a new opener by Anna Clyne.

Xian Zhang directs the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in Tchaikovsky’s symphonic drama Manfred and the overtures to La forza del destino and La traviata. Celebrated Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja sings arias from Rigoletto, Luisa Miller and I vespri siciliani.

A series of musical farewells as Osmo Vänskä conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s turbulent ‘Pathétique’ Symphony, Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and Anthony Payne’s orchestration of Vaughan Williams’s Four Last Songs.

David Hill conducts the BBC Singers and the Choristers of Temple Church in Britten’s choral variations A Boy was Born, written when the composer was just 19 years old, and George Lloyd’s Requiem, dedicated to the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.