Held each summer in Verbier, an alpine resort in the Swiss canton of Valais, the Verbier Festival will return from 16 July to 2 August 2026 for its 33rd edition. The program brings together leading international artists and emerging performers from the festival’s Academy, including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Renée Fleming, and pianists Yunchan Lim, Bruce Liu, and Alexandre Kantorow.
Orchestras and conductors
The opening concert will be conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, featuring Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphony with Lucas Debargue (piano) and Cécile Lartigau (ondes Martenot). Other conductors include Simon Rattle, who appears in two programs — one with Kirill Gerstein in music by Ligeti, Wagner, and Strauss, and another leading Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Magdalena Kožená and Gerald Finley.
Gábor Takács-Nagy directs Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Dvořák’s New World Symphony, while Daniel Harding leads Joshua Bell and Bryn Terfel in a mixed program including Rachmaninov. Lahav Shani conducts Yunchan Lim and Minsoo Sohn in Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, and Vasily Petrenko closes the festival with Kantorow in Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite.
Piano and chamber music
The piano repertoire will be prominent throughout the edition. Martha Argerich appears in several chamber concerts, among them Dichterliebe with Magdalena Kožená and Alexandre Kantorow, and Beethoven works with Janine Jansen and Mischa Maisky. Evgeny Kissin offers a solo recital and later joins András Schiff for a duo program for two pianos.
Other pianists include Lucas Debargue, Alexandre Kantorow, Nobuyuki Tsujii, Khatia Buniatishvili, Bruce Liu, and Yunchan Lim, representing a younger generation of artists active on major international stages.
Chamber and vocal recitals will feature Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Richard Goode, Leonidas Kavakos, and Peter Mattei, while Renée Fleming performs in a concert with Lahav Shani combining music and projected imagery created with the National Geographic Society.
Academy and new works
The Verbier Festival Academy will mark the 10th anniversary of the Prix Yves Paternot, with past laureates such as Adèle Charvet and Timothy Chooi among the performers. Several concerts will feature the Academy’s singers and instrumentalists in chamber and orchestral settings.
The program also includes the world premiere of a work by Tsotne Zedginidze, a 16-year-old Georgian pianist and composer, within the Rencontres Inédites series, which continues to bring together established and emerging musicians.
Background and expansion
Founded in 1994 by Martin T:son Engstroem, the Verbier Festival has become one of Europe’s leading summer events, known for fostering collaborations between experienced musicians and emerging artists within an informal alpine setting.
As previously announced, the festival will also hold a winter edition in China in January 2026, bringing several of its regular artists — including Martha Argerich, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell, and Bryn Terfel — to Shenzhen.
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