Here is our pick of the best classical music festivals taking place across Europe during 2025. Don't forget to also check out our useful guide to the UK's best classical music festivals in 2025.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025
We'll run through 2025's best European festivals country by country. Here goes...
Best classical music festivals Germany 2025
Dresden Festival
Dresden, Germany, 17 May – 14 June
musikfestspiele.com
From Fado and the traditional Chinese music of Xi’an Orchestra to period-instrument Wagner and open-air Ronan Keating, Dresden is embracing the theme of ‘LOVE’. Boldly so, exactly eight decades after the city was reduced to rubble at the end of World War II. It also marks 20 years since the painstakingly reconstructed Frauenkirche opened its doors once more. Orchestral Górecki and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord make for unexpected bedfellows; Mitsuko Uchida pairs Schubert’s piano sonata swansong with Kurtág; and, with motets to the fore, Bach’s 340th birthday isn’t forgotten.
Bachfest Leipzig
Leipzig, Germany, 12-22 June
bachfestleipzig.de
275 years after his death, JS Bach and Leipzig remain in symbiotic cahoots – especially in June when a festival celebrating Bachiana in all its ear-bending variety holds sway. ‘Transformations’ is the 2025 banner, and it doesn’t just encompass Bach’s habit of artful recycling, The famous Haussmann portrait itself is recycled thanks to the wonders of augmented reality, allowing the Thomaskantor to step out of its frame for a little chat and music-making. Less futuristic highlights include the B minor Mass two ways, pianist András Schiff, and Nevermind’s reimagining of the Goldberg Variations.
Munich Opera Festival
Munich, Germany, 27 June – 31 July
staatsoper.de
There’s been an opera festival in Munich since 1875, and 150 years on it remains in a league of its own. Opera might be ubiquitous, but not exclusively so. Alongside chamber music concerts and song recitals by the likes of Diana Damrau, Christian Gerhaher and Jonas Kaufmann, Baroque evenings and dance are stitched into a programme probing the allure of myths. Conducted by Susanna Mälkki, Fauré’s Pénélope secures its Munich premiere, and David Hermann directs a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Wagner and Strauss bolster the mythic deep dive, as does an eye-catching double bill of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Schoenberg’s Erwartung.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Musikfest Berlin
Berlin, Germany,
30 August – 20 September
berlinerfestspiele.de
As exuberant warm-ups go, Musikfest Berlin makes quite the statement! A prequel announcing the imminent arrival of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s new season, it lures orchestras from around the world together with instrumental and choral ensembles, and in addition showcases the city’s other great orchestras. The first week leans Frenchwards with the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and the period forces of Philippe Herreweghe’s Orchestre des Champs-Élysées and Collegium Vocale Gent. Not to be outdone, Les Siècles gives two concerts on one night, the second devoted exclusively to the music of Boulez. And to begin, introducing the Berio centenary tributes, conductor Klaus Mäkelä and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra preface Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra with the Italian modernist’s love letter to Schubert: Rendering.
Best classical music festivals Austria 2025
Bregenz Festival
Bregenz, Austria, 16 July – 17 August
bregenzerfestspiele.com
Bregenzer Festspiele doesn’t just nuzzle up to Lake Constance – its floating opera stage takes to the water, literally! Hannu Lintu conducts Andreas Kriegenburg’s new production of Ensecu’s Œdipe which shares the pontoon-writ-large with Weber’s Der Freischütz, while in Theater am Kornmarkt, Rossini’s La Cenerentola battles domestic drudgery. Orchestral and chamber music interweave the operatic fare; Tango by the Lake entices; and the world premiere of Osmo Tapio Räihälä’s Farmer George is neatly complemented by Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King.
Salzburg Festival
Salzburg, Austria, 18 July – 31 August
salzburgfestival.at
‘The endgame of human existence’ stalks a 2025 Salzburg summer, and that plays out in an opera programme which marries Schoenberg and Mahler, delights in two very different Macbeths (by Verdi and Sciarrino), fashions a pasticcio out of Vivaldi, and features Evgeny Titov’s new production of Eötvös’s Chekhov-indebted Three Sisters. Salzburg is rarely slow off the mark when it comes to anniversaries – mustering artists including pianists Igor Levit and Evgeny Kissin, plus the Vienna Phil under Andris Nelsons, seven concerts salute 50 years since Shostakovich’s death, while the centenary of Boulez’s birth chalks up five.
Best classical music festivals Italy 2025
Ravenna Festival
Ravenna, Italy, 31 May – 31 July
ravennafestival.org
The last resting place of Dante, Ravenna isn’t shy about looking to literature for an over-arching theme. Two years ago, the centenary of Calvino’s birth came in for scrutiny; this year, taking its starting point from Sancho Panza, the city delves into ‘Where there is Music there can be nothing bad’. Cue an exploration of courage extending to Handel’s Orlando during November’s operatic postscript. Conductor Zubin Mehta masterminds Richard Strauss’s autobiographical Symphonia domestica; Mahlerian flowers bloom for the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Daniel Harding; and The Tallis Scholars pay homage to the anniversaries of Palestrina and Arvo Pärt.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Epicenter Venice
Venice, Italy, 5-7 September
epicentervenice.com
During La Serenissima’s 17th- and 18th- century musical heyday you might have bumped into Monteverdi crossing Piazza San Marco or shared a canal-side glass of wine with Vivaldi or Handel. Pianist Alexandros Kapelis wonders why the city, home to several major international festivals, lacks a flagship festival devoted to classical music. And having trialled a prototype two years ago, he launches the first edition of a line-up spanning 500 years of music across 19 concerts and venues including private palazzi. Among those dipping a toe in the inaugural water are mezzo Joyce DiDonato, cellist Mischa Maisky and the Berliner Barock Solisten – the early music offshoot of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Best classical music festivals Czech Republic 2025
Prague Spring Festival
Prague, Czech Republic, 12 May – 3 June
festival.cz/en
2024 might officially have been the ‘Year of Czech Music’, but Prague needed little prompting to join in the celebrations. Every year, its Spring Festival opens with Smetana’s love letter to his homeland: the tone poem cycle Má Vlast. The Czech Philharmonic under Semyon Bychkov do the honours this spring and reconvene to close a bumper 80th-anniversary edition with Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. Orchestras from Chicago, Boston, Tokyo, London and Vienna join in the rejoicing; and artist-in-residence Patricia Kopatchinskaja champions Czech composer Luboš Fišer. The contemporary music showcase ‘Prague Offspring’ presents George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill, while the early music strand rewinds to the 14th century and Francesco Landini. Add in a production of Janáček’s Jenůfa by director Calixto Bieito, Arvo Pärt at 90, plus Mozart from Concentus Musicus Wien, and Prague is a festival worth Czeching out!
Best classical music festivals Turkey 2025
Istanbul Music Festival
Istanbul, Turkey, 11 – 26 June
muzik.iksv.org
‘We present artists with an opportunity to dream,’ observes festival director Yesim Gürer Oymak. Audiences, too, she might add. This year Istanbul is looking ‘Beyond Borders’ – cultural, metaphysical and geographic. Chopin Funk meets Whiplash courtesy of The Preda Brothers; world premieres include a specially commissioned piano trio from Valentin Silvestrov; and La Venexiana takes a musical delve into the paintings of Caravaggio with works by Monteverdi, Schütz and Sigismondo d’India. Bosphorus-bound, too, are the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Camerata Salzburg with pianist Hélène Grimaud.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Best classical music festivals Scandinavia and Finland 2025
Bergen International Festival
Bergen, Norway, 21 May – 4 June
fib.no
The multi-disciplinary William Kentridge is Bergen’s 2025 artist-in-residence, and he nails his cross-genre colours to the mast on the festival’s opening night, which partners The Great Yes, The Great No with his film accompaniment to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 performed live by the Bergen Philharmonic. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato ponders the eternal feminine; in the Håkonshallen, Edvard Grieg, Sibelius and Franck preoccupy cellist Truls Mørk and pianist Håvard Gimse; and Grieg’s Troldhaugen villa welcomes an adroitly plotted chamber music series.
Festival O/Modernt
Stockholm Sweden, 13-15 June
omodernt.com
Stockholm’s dapper Queen Silvia Concert Hall describes itself as ‘a sounding room for an interconnected world’ and has spent the year navigating a theme based on the idea of bridges. Crowning it is O/Modernt’s June festival, which extends the notion to explore ‘Crossings’. As ever, the programming is eclectic: Rameau and Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge sit cheek by jowl with Sting, Radiohead and newly commissioned works by Sauli Zinovjev and Nicola Campogrande.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Savonlinna Opera Festival
Savonlinna, Finland, 3 July – 2 August
operafestival.fi
Lakeside Olavinlinna celebrates the castle’s 550th birthday, and the opera festival that calls it ‘home’ blows out the candles with a new work by Antti Auvinen as well as Aulis Sallinen’s Linna vedessä (‘The Castle in the Water’). Homage delivered, it’s back to operatic business, which marks the half-centenary of Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations, features Ewa Płonka as the proud Princess in Puccini’s Turandot and, enlisting the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, parties like it’s 1692 to the beat of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.
Rosendal Chamber Music Festival
Baroniet Rosendal, Norway, 6-10 August
baroniet.no
Soprano Mari Eriksmoen, pianist James Baillieu and violist Timothy Ridout are among the musicians joining artistic director Leif Ove Andsnes for a final edition of the chamber music festival he founded nearly a decade ago. Grieg, who lived in the area for two years, is the focus, as are composers Geirr Tveitt and Knut Vaage – Hardanger enthusiasts all. The influence of honorary Leipzigers Schumann and Mendelssohn is noted with a nod to the young Grieg’s studies at the city’s Conservatory; and, in anniversary year, Ravel and Shostakovich are not forgotten.
Best classical music festivals Estonia 2025
Pärnu Music Festival
Pärnu, Estonia, 16-25 July
parnumusicfestival.ee
Lapped by the Gulf of Riga, Estonia’s unofficial summer capital has the nation’s veteran composer in its sights as it celebrates Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday. The festival does him proud in four concerts by the Estonian Festival Orchestra under Paavo Järvi; Neeme Järvi conducts the haunting Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, while his other son, Kristjan, and Nordic Pulse combine Pärt’s music with improvisation and new works.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Haapsalu Early Music Festival
Haapsalu, Estonia, 24-27 July
studiovocale.ee
Where Russian royalty and celebrities including Tchaikovsky once came for seaside summer refreshment, Haapsalu refreshes musical spirits still – and last year notched up three decades of an early music festival that boasts an Early Music Youth Camp to boot. Ensembles from Poland, Norway and Latvia include Trio Mediæval and Tumult Ensemble, while the final concert re-invites harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, whose ensemble Nevermind give Bach’s Goldberg Variations an instrumentally expanded makeover.
Best classical music festivals Portugal 2025
Marvão International Music Festival
Marvão, Portugal, 18-27 July
marvaomusic.com
With its imposing castle and glorious sunsets bathing the Serra de São Mamede, Marvão’s outdoor music festival was a no-brainer when launched in 2014. The tenth anniversary behind it, returning artists and debutantes include pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, tenors Christoph and Julian Prégardien, as well as Quatuor Arod. And among others, Schoenberg, Webern and Richard Strauss are the subject of deftly painted composer portraits. Beneath the stars, late-night Fado and Messiaen beckon.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Best classical music festivals Ireland 2025
Blackwater Opera Festival
Lismore, Ireland, 27 May – 2 June
blackwatervalleyoperafestival.com
There’s midsummer night’s dreaming afoot in the Blackwater Valley as the opera festival notches up its 15th anniversary in the company of Benjamin Britten’s bewitched and bewitching brush with the Bard. And could the venue for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas be more appropriate? The Carthaginian queen’s fate is sealed in St Carthage’s Cathedral. From free, al fresco lunchtime recitals to an Irish Heritage recital and celebration of George Bernard Shaw, Irish eyes are smiling!
West Cork Chamber Music Festival
Bantry, Ireland, 27 June – 6 July
westcorkmusic.ie
With year-round concerts, a literary festival and August’s focus on traditional music, West Cork Music doesn’t let the grass grow under its feet. Celebrating its 30th edition, the chamber music festival has a soft spot for the family – whether it’s composer Brett Dean and his mezzo daughter Lotte, or the brothers and sisters of Quatuor Tchalik who premiere a new work by Sam Perkin on the first night. A sizeable cohort of string quartets includes the returning Chiaroscuros and Dorics; birthday greetings are bestowed on Ravel; and Woodpeckers Recorder Quartet gilds the Baroque with Scandi folk tunes.
Best classical music festivals Netherlands 2025
Mahler Festival
Amsterdam, Netherlands, 9-18 May
mahlerfestival.concertgebouw.nl/en/
Gustav Mahler first conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1903, and the city subsequently took him to its heart – not least thanks to the enthusiasm of Willem Mengelberg. In 1920, marking 25 years as the orchestra’s conductor, Mengelberg organised a Mahler festival, and this third incarnation promises the complete symphonies (performed chronologically) and songs. The Amsterdamers shoulder Symphonies Nos 1 and 8 under Klaus Mäkelä; but the symphonic heavy lifting is shared with flagship orchestras from Budapest, Tokyo, Berlin and Chicago.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Holland Festival
Amsterdam, Netherlands, 6-29 June
hollandfestival.nl
Holland Festival likes to style itself ‘ground-breaking’. And with reason. Among a clutch of world premieres, the Atlas Orchestra’s unique sound palette, drawing together instrumental families from Europe and China to Korea and Azerbaijan, is at the service of a new piece by Joël Bons; while Misato Mochizuki’s Otemba – Daring Women brings a 17th-century Dutch painting to life while addressing issues surrounding colonialism and feminism.
Best classical music festivals Spain 2025
Granada Festival
Granada, Spain, 13 June – 19 July
granadafestival.org
The spirits of Falla and Lorca stalk the Andalucian capital and its festival which every summer enlivens the Moorish Alhambra and Generalife Gardens. It’s 100 years since Falla’s El amor brujo and Psyché were premiered, and their anniversaries are saluted alongside those of Ravel, Boulez and Berio. The Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia delivers the Verdi Requiem; there’s Mahler from the Budapest Festival Orchestra; tenor Ian Bostridge sings Britten; and Messiaen’s complete Catalogue d’Oiseaux takes flight under Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s airborne fingers.
Best classical music festivals Balkans 2025
Festival Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia,
20 June – 12 September
ljubljanafestival.si
Ljubljana lets its hair down with a symphony-orchestra-meets-big-band opening night – soon to be followed by an evening of Flamenco and Latin grooves, not to mention a celebration of Ennio Morricone. But Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Verdi’s Otello keep the operatic flag flying and, among the attendant orchestral ‘big-hitters’, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia partners mezzo Magdalena Kožená, The Monte Carlo Philharmonic acknowledges the Ravel anniversary with pianist Martha Argerich, and, under Franz Welser-Möst, the Vienna Philharmonic unites Mozart and Tchaikovsky.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Dubrovnik Summer Festival
Dubrovnik, Croatia, 10 July – 25 August
dubrovnik-festival.hr
The idyllic island of Lokrum becomes Prospero’s enchanted isle as Shakespeare’s The Tempest casts its spell over a Croatian summer – aided and abetted by Goldoni and Chekhov. But, from homegrown orchestras to Fabio Biondi with the Croatian Baroque Ensemble, Dubrovnik’s musical strand sparkles. In the Atrium of the Rector’s Palace, Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata salutes ‘Wonder Women’; The King’s Singers juxtapose ‘Angels and Demons’; and, conjoining members of the Philharmonics of Berlin and Vienna, Philharmonix makes its Dubrovnik debut.
George Enescu International Festival
Bucharest, Romania,
24 August – 21 September
festivalenescu.ro
Bucharest is awash with anniversaries this year – and not just the usual suspects. It’s 70 years since the death of violinist-composer George Enescu, and the festival named after him celebrates one of Romania’s own with performances of over 45 of his works, including the opera Œdipe. New to the cornucopia of tantalising strands is one at the MINA Museum combining music with the visual arts; and among over 80 visiting ensembles are the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Il Giardino Armonico.
Best classical music festivals France 2025
Rencontres Musicales d’Évian
Évian, France, 25 June – 5 July
hotel-royal.evianresort.com
For violinist Renaud Capuçon, the role of the artistic director is to ‘make dreams’, and this year his Haute-Savoie festival is dreaming of Ravel. As well as the complete chamber music, Boléro is danced by Béjart Ballet Lausanne, and Martha Argerich plays the G major Piano Concerto in an all-Ravel programme from Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. A Handelian detour involves Les Arts Florissants in Il Trionfo del Tempo e il Disinganno, while pianist Igor Levit succumbs to late Schubert.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2025...
Aix-en-Provence Festival
Aix-en-Provence, France, 4-21 July
festival-aix.com
Though by no means exclusively an opera festival, the operatic stage is still at the heart of Aix’s blue-chip festival, whether in world premieres or thought-provoking productions. ‘Metamorphosis’ is central to this year’s offerings, which include, staged by director Peter Sellars, the first performance of Sivan Eldar’s The Nine Jewelled Deer; a radical respray of Britten’s Billy Budd; and Cavalli’s La Calisto. In the concert hall, Simon Rattle leads his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Ligeti, Wagner and Bruckner, while Quatuor Diotima brings together Boulez, Saariaho and Debussy.
Best classical music festivals Switzerland 2025
Gstaad Menuhin Festival
Gstaad, Switzerland, 18 July – 6 September
gstaadmenuhinfestival.ch
The encouragement of young talent was central to the festival violinist Yehudi Menuhin established in 1957, and this spirit lives on in an ambitious Academy that fertilises a programme dwelling on ‘Migration’ this year. It’s a rich theme richly explored, including dives into exile and nostalgia. Shostakovich 50 is honoured; yodelling embraced; and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja tackles notions of ‘origin’ and ‘challenge’. Directed by William Christie, Les Arts Florissants set the migratory ball rolling with Handel’s Israel in Egypt.
Verbier Festival
Verbier, Switzerland, 16 July – 3 August
verbierfestival.com
From choice chamber music through opera to orchestral masterworks, nothing oxygenates the mountain air of the Swiss Alps quite like Verbier’s crucible of learning, performance and discovery – a place where the musical great and good of today nurture the aspiring great and good of tomorrow. Swiss national pride acknowledged on opening night, the star-studded programme unfolds across some 100 events. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet bestrides Ravel’s complete solo piano music; Bryn Terfel takes the title role in Puccini’s one-act Gianni Schicchi; and heading off the classical piste, there’s jazz from the Brad Mehldau Trio.
Lucerne Festival
Lucerne, Switzerland,
12 August – 14 September
lucernefestival.ch
What with the Spring Festival, Piano Fest and the contemporary music Forward Festival each November, Lucerne is positively festivals central. And never more so than in summer, when a month-long jamboree scarcely pauses for breath. ‘Open End’ is the 2025 theme which dovetails neatly with a celebration of Pierre Boulez, who founded the Festival Academy and habitually revised his compositions. Marco Stoppa is composer-in-residence, and new works by Dai Fujikura and Olga Neuwirth spike period Wagner, lakeside Mahler and Charpentier from Les Arts Florissants.
Best classical music festivals Poland 2025
Wratislavia Cantans
Wrocław, Poland, 5-15 September
nfm.wroclaw.pl
With Vox Luminis, John Eliot Gardiner’s new Constellation Choir and Orchestra and Wagner’s Parsifal, the human voice is never far away in elegant Wrocław’s late summer festival. The clue, after all, is in the title. But not everything has a song in its heart as the theme of ‘Paradise Lost (?)’ is unwrapped. As well as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and pianist Martha Argerich, JS Bach’s Art of Fugue is re-imagined for chamber ensemble.