Here is our pick of the best classical music festivals taking place across Australia, Asia and the Middle East during 2026.
Don't forget to also check out our useful guides to:
- The best UK classical music festivals and summer opera 2026
- The best European classical music festivals 2026
- The best USA and Canadian classical music festivals 2026
Best classical music festivals 2026: Australia & New Zealand
Canberra International Music Festival
Canberra, Australia, 29 April – 3 May
cimf.org.au
From Spanish Baroque to the cutting-edge derring-do proposed by ‘Luminescence of the Machine’ (a fertile encounter between vocal sextet and electronics), Canberra’s programming likes to stand out from the crowd. And stand out it does, what with a clarinet and honky-tonk piano speakeasy makeover of Gershwin and Stravinsky, or accordionist James Crabb’s ‘Supplication to Transcendence Breakfast’ serving up Bach, Gubaidulina and croissants! A ‘Piano and Percussion’ finale, meanwhile, places a new work by Fiona Hill between Rachmaninov and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Coriole Music Festival
McLaren Vale, Australia, 16, 17 May
coriolemusicfestival.com
Youthful Mahler and Korngold are popping the cork for McLaren Vale’s 2026 rendezvous with fine wine, fine dining and even finer music. Drawing a line under its toothsome à la carte, John Adams is teamed up with the premieres of works by Anne Cawrse and Belinda Gehlert, not to mention anniversary Puccini. En route, vocal Copland, Zemlinsky and Alma Mahler are wrapped around Alice Chance’s effervescent Nose Scrunch Reel.
Best classical music festivals Australia, Asia, Middle East 2026
Australian Festival of Chamber Music
Cairns-Gimuy, Australia, 24 July – 1 August
afcm.com.au
For lovers of the natural world, Cairns-Gimuy is all about the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest; but come late-July it’s now a mecca for music lovers too as Australia’s pukka chamber music festival relocates. Not that nature and music need compete. A Sunset Series spans Purcell and Fasch to a completion of Gideon Klein’s unfinished January 25, 1945; or step aboard the Spirit of Cairns for musical cruising in the company of Bach and Beethoven. From conversations to masterclasses, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with a narrative twist to ‘Horrible Histories: composers’ edition’, violinist Jack Liebeck’s AFCM is settling in nicely!
At The World’s Edge Festival
Queenstown Lakes, New Zealand, 3-16 October
worldsedgefestival.com
Nature inspired last year’s edition, set against the backdrop of New Zealand’s majestic Southern Alps. And why wouldn’t it, when the lakes cast their own spell too, bewitching a festival that since 2021 has been bringing together international artists and native New Zealanders in a peripatetic programme orbiting Wanaka, Queenstown, Cromwell and Bannockburn. Inspiring young talent and community spirit give the festival its distinctive ‘edge’ which, directed by violinists Benjamin Baker and Justine Cormack, also looks outwards – this spring forging links with similarly lake-lapped Chicago.
Best classical music festivals Australia, Asia, Middle East 2026
Best classical music festivals 2026: Japan & Singapore
Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden
Suntory Hall, Tokyo, 5-20 June
suntory.com
June’s Chamber Music Garden is coming up roses as Suntory Hall basks in the glow of its 40th anniversary. And it’s 15 years since the hall’s director, cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, inaugurated the chamber festival which continues to keep Beethoven close by. It falls to Quatuor Ébène to deliver 2026’s complete string quartets cycle, and the Aoi Trio nears journey’s end on its seven-year traversal of the piano trios. Tsutsumi himself presides over the opening and closing concerts – the first a four-cello extravaganza. The Kronberg Academy pairs sextet Strauss with quintet Schubert; while ahead of next year’s Beethoven tercentenary, Ikuyo Nakamichi tackles the last three piano sonatas.
Singapore International Piano Festival
Victoria Hall, Singapore, 2-5 July
sso.org.sg
Martha Argerich, Piotr Anderszewski and period instrument maestro Robert Levin have graced previous iterations of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s festival devoted to the solo piano. The 32nd edition’s masterclasses and recitals include homegrown talent (Churen Li and Jonathan Shin), as well as Conrad Tao and Sean Chen from America, and the Canadian Jon Kimura Parker.
Best classical music festivals Australia, Asia, Middle East 2026
Pacific Music Festival
Sapporo, Japan, 7-27 July
pmf.or.jp
You can’t escape the shadow of Leonard Bernstein at PMF. His Candide overture invariably fires the starting pistol; and a Bernstein memorial concert is baked into the schedule (this year featuring Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5). It’s hardly surprising – Lennie was the festival’s founding father back in 1990, though he didn’t live to see it prosper. Members of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics are among the Academy Orchestra’s mentors and, at the service of Britten, Bartók and Sibelius among others, this year’s crop of conductors musters Ryan Bancroft, David Robertson and Andreas Ottensamer.
Best classical music festivals 2026: Jerusalem & Beirut
Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival
Jerusalem, Israel, 26-29 July
lyric-opera.org
Prefaced by bel canto Bellini, the Lyric Opera Festival ’26 is bookended by an Italian-infiltrated Gala conducted by Michael Fennelly and Verdi’s tormented tragedy: La traviata. Mozart’s Così fan tutte unfolds its bitter-sweet mind games; and threaded through a concentrated four days there’s a tribute to women’s voices silenced or impacted by World War II, an excursion into the late Romanticism of Schoenberg, Strauss, Bartók and Kodaly, plus concerts devoted to chamber Rachmaninov and operatic Verdi.
Beirut International Guitar Competition and Festival
Beirut, Lebanon, 23 November – 4 December
conservatory.gov.lb
The Lebanese capital is no stranger to the allure of the guitar but the inaugural edition of a new competition with festival attached takes things up a gear. Curated by composer-guitarist José Maria Gallardo del Rey, chamber and orchestral concerts leaven youth laboratories, masterclasses, premieres and artistic exchanges, while the competition culminates in a final round accompanied by the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra.
