Wimbledon International Music Festival returns next month with 26 events on offer from 7 to 29 November 2026. This year's festival, the 18th, is the second festival under the artistic directorship of Anthony Friend who took over from the festival's founder, Anthony Wilkinson in 2025.
When he founded the festival in 2009, Anthony Wilkinson had a long-held dream of creating a new concert hall in Wimbledon. Under Anthony Friend, the festival has embraced a diversity of venues. The main concert venue is St John the Baptist, Spencer Hill but there are also events in Auditorium, Wimbledon High School; Upper Hall, Sacred Heart Church; King’s College School, Wimbledon, along with more unusual spaces including Merton Arts Space, Wimbledon Library; The Rushmere pub, Ridgway; Jeroboams wine bar, Wimbledon Village; along with a schools' concert in New Wimbledon Theatre.
The festival opens with Sacred Splendour, music from Venice and Madrid performed by Academy Choir of Wimbledon, conductor George Inscoe (Sub-Organist at St Paul’s Cathedral) , and His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts. And the festival concludes with a recital by pianist Angela Hewitt, who returns to the festival for the third time.
Other highlights include a recital by pianist David Khrikuli, a laureate of the Chopin International Piano Competition in Bach, Chopin, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, and festival artistic director Anthony Friend joins Quatuor Agate for Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, plus quartets by Korngold and Schubert. Spanish pianist Antonio Oyarzábal joins the Solem Quartet for piano quintets by Dvorak and Amy Beach. Members of Sinfonia Cymru are led by Haim Choi in a programme that moves from Mendelssohn's Octet and Oli Mustonen's Nonetto II to smaller line-ups for music by Lili Boulanger, Louise Farrenc and Jean Francaix.
Max Barley (Director of Music, Holy Trinity Sloane Square) returns to the festival with the latest programme of Bach, this time the cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, the motet O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht, and Magnificat. Sinfonia Smith Square are conducted by Charlotte Corderoy in Anna Clyne's virtuosic orchestral showpiece Sound and fury, a new flugelhorn concerto, Hargrove, by Gabriel Jackson with soloist Imogen Whitehead (for whom it was written) and Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.
A rising star of the viola, Edgar Francis was just 22 years old when he won the 2021 Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition. At this year's festival he is joined by pianist Jâms Coleman for the Tertis Memorial Concert with music from Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Rebecca Clarke and Frank Bridge.
There is a gala recital by rising opera stars from the English National Opera, featuring favourite arias accompanied by piano and English sparkling wine from Roebuck Estates. The Festival takes over The Rushmere pub for two nights: jazz singer Natalie Williams and her band, in association with Ronnie Scott's, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, performing French Baroque music in their lighthearted Night Shift format.
Candlelit concerts bring a cosy Scandinavian atmosphere to performances by the Lodestar Trio, combining Nordic folk music with Bach, and soprano Ruby Hughes with lutenist Jonas Nordberg, performing a programme devoted to John Dowland. Whilst events at at Jeroboams in Wimbledon Village, pair music with wines from around the world: Neapolitan song with wines from Naples and southern Italy, and Piazzolla with Argentinian wine. There is an evening of live music and live painting, with Jérémie Queyras and violinist Charlotte Spruit creating three large-scale canvases during the concert, which will be available for sale afterwards.
Alongside its public performances, the Festival reaches thousands of young people through its partnership with Merton Music Foundation, supporting music education and bringing live performance to schools across the borough.
Full details from the Festival's website.
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