North America's oldest outdoor music venue has officially announced its 2026 lineup.
"We're so excited about this year's lineup," smiled Jeffrey P. Haydon, President, CEO, Ravinia Festival. "We have more than 90 concerts, 50 artist debuts, 15 genres year."
"Paul Simon, Ziggy Marley, Squeeze, Rod Stewart, Bonnie Raint, Brandie Carlisle, Kool & the Gang, Alabama, Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band, Miranda Lambert, Harry Connick, Junior, Chance The Rapper, I could go on," said Haydon. "We have the widest variety of music of any venue you'll find."
Haydon says the outdoor season begins a month later this year because of the ongoing 75 million dollar renovation project, but they are packing in as many shows as a regular summer.
"Even with construction and the later start, we still managed the pack in the same amount of pavilion shows starting from July to end of September.
The renovation project also includes upgrades to the Martin Theater, Bennett Gordon Hall, the Carousel Stage, and other areas, continuing through the 2029 season, which will be Ravinia's 125th anniversary
"We have been so busy for the off season. We are undertaking the largest reconstruction project in Ravinia's history. We are completely renovating, updating and futurizing Ravinia's iconic pavilion." This will allow for the full depth and range of sound for music that you know and love at Ravinia, comfortable chairs, with great cushions, cupholders, amazing lighting, amazing sound, a bigger stage to accommodate all the first class acts that are coming through."
This is Phase 2 of the multi year renovation.
"Last Fall, we shortened the season a bit to get started. We have been doing things audiences will never see. We have new catwalks in the ceiling, all kinds of infrastructure for our team to mount production and create new experiences for the audience. That was Phase 1, which was mostly focused on production and loading dock, boring for audiences but exciting for us. Phase 2 is all about the artists and the audience." he said.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, returning for the 90th anniversary of its Ravinia residency, will perform six programs under the leadership of Ravinia Chief Conductor Marin Alsop, including the July 11 grand reopening concert with Yunchan Lim playing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major and a joint appearance by celebrated flutists Lizzo and Sir James Galway.
"This season is interesting in that it is the longest season as Ravinia has as we're starting indoors in June with a blowout weekend in the Martin Theater with big superstars and in the new Audrey, but the Pavilion itself doesn't open until July 11th,"
Tickets go on sale only at here beginning Thursday, April 23, with donors able to request tickets as early as Tuesday, March 17. Ravinia has no affiliation with websites that resell tickets. Third-party ticket prices and availability are pure speculation and frequently include large markups.
"For those of us who are in Chicagoland, who've grown up in Chicagoland, its easy to take Ravinia for granted. It holds a very special place in everybody's heart. It's not just a venue to go to, this is years, and generations of memories: first date, first kiss, friends, family, time with mom and dad, so this is a special place. We have people that come from all 50 states because they don't have that in their own city. We are a destination and it's literally in your backyard," said Haydon.
RAVINIA 2026 SCHEDULE
All performances take place in the Hunter Pavilion except where noted.
MT = Martin Theatre BGH = Bennett Gordon Hall
SKC = Sandra K. Crown Theater CSL = Carousel Stage
Artists making their Ravinia debut are marked with an asterisk (*).
Alumni of the Steans Institute are marked with a hash (#).
Artists making their Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut are marked with a caret (^).
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The CSO’s annual six-week residency—July 11 through August 16 this season—includes programs led by Marin Alsop and distinguished guest conductors.
● July 11 \ An international star as the youngest-ever Van Cliburn Competition winner, Yunchan Lim returns to join the CSO and Marin Alsop in adding gleams of Art Deco style to the Hunter Pavilion’s first concert with Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, brimming with Parisian jazz, Basque soulfulness, and American spirit. Mutually inspired artists Lizzo*^ and Sir James Galway duet on flutes with CSO, sharing their intergenerational spark for transforming lives
with music.
○ Woven around this concert are spotlights on our Reach Teach Play programs and the access to music they create. Our Women’s Board hosts the Gala before and after the performance to raise funds for Ravinia and these initiatives.● July 16 & 18 \ James Conlon returns to lead Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, a tale of love’s unimpeached loyalty winning out over fame and gain. Mozart built his theater legacy on this comic opera, not long before Figaro, tweaking norms of power by giving each man a hapless streak and showing women as agents of constancy. Kathryn Lewek and Miles Mykkanen^ star with scene-stopping songs in German and action narrated in English. (MT)
● July 19 \ Gramophone’s Young Artist and Instrumentalist of the Year for 2025, María Dueñas*^ makes her CSO and Ravinia debuts joining Marin Alsop for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, lending “memorable, highly individual” flair with “bold, languorously romantic” cadenzas (The Strad). Alsop also sets out the rustic tranquility of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, where storm music swirls and brightly passes with Midwestern energy and grace.
● July 23 \ “A symphony must be like the world,” Mahler said. “It must contain everything.” Marshaling the profound energy of the CSO for Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Marin Alsop leads a riveting search for meaning in a complex, rapidly changing world. Moving through moments of idyllic nostalgia to devastating fanaticism and fateful blows, this monumental work perfectly
anticipates the challenges and longing of the 21st century.
● July 24 \ Marin Alsop and Emmy-winning composer Laura Karpman co-curate spotlights on original orchestral music’s magic in screen storytelling. A 30-year veteran of prestige TV, documentary, game, and Marvel scores, Karpman demonstrates how music can guide the interpretation of a film scene, with performances by Alsop and the CSO. Together, they also focus on women composers—long under-represented on the screen—sharing music by the likes of Shirley Walker, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Rachel Portman, and Chanda Dancy. Alsop premieres Karpman’s Unsung, featuring music for iconic female characters who never before had a theme, and Taki Alsop Fellow Chi-Yuan Lin*^ leads Star Wars themes by John Williams and Natalie Holt, the first woman to compose for the storied franchise.
○ This centerpiece of the fifth Breaking Barriers Festival is bookended by a pre-concert panel and, before July 25’s concert, an extended live demonstration of music setting film moods.● July 25 \ One of the most innovative artists in modern music, six-time Grammy winner St. Vincent^ offers audiences a kaleidoscope of sonic and visual exploration. In a limited, first-ever run of performances with orchestra, she joins the CSO alongside orchestrator/conductor Jules Buckley*^ to share a new dimension of favorites and deep cuts from her whole catalog, from Marry Me to All Born Screaming.
● July 31 \ Marin Alsop returns to Dvořák’s famous Ninth Symphony, which borrows themes of Indigenous and Black American music to depict the essence of our “New World” home. Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass, a Ravinia co-commission, has its Midwest premiere with the CSO, spreading gospel-music spirituality of thanks, loss, joy, and hope layered with Black Catholic tradition and classical-music liturgy.
● August 1 \ The “always thoughtful, lyrical, and lustrous” (Washington Post) pianist Emanuel Ax celebrates the 50th anniversary of his CSO debut by joining Marin Alsop and the orchestra on John Williams’s new concerto, each movement an homage to a jazz icon. Alsop wraps the all-American program in Rachmaninoff’s jazzy Symphonic Dances and John Adams’s driving Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
● August 2 \ Tony Award–winning orchestrator and conductor Ted Sperling mines more than 200 years of popular songs to share enchanting gems that center our country’s triumphs and challenges, featuring the CSO and vocalists Bryonha Marie*^ and Noah Ricketts*^ gleaming like amber waves of grain on “Summertime,” “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “Shenandoah,” “Over the Rainbow,” the hoedown from Copland’s Rodeo, and more standards and
contemporary anthems.
● August 6 \ Hailed as “a rivetingly energetic presence” (New York Times), CSO Zell Music Director Designate Klaus Mäkelä* leads the polar expedition of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with soloist Daniel Lozakovich*, whose “exceptional talent” (Le Figaro) made their joint debut downtown in 2022 a landmark moment reprised tonight. Mäkelä also scales the mountainous tone-tale of Strauss’s Alpine Symphony.
● August 7 \ Dedicated to sharing the renowned artistry of the CSO, Klaus Mäkelä reignites his history-launching debut with Stravinsky’s complete, storied score for The Firebird. Mäkelä keeps the spotlight on the orchestra with works by Debussy that weave captivating themesaround each section, from the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun to Ibéria, called an “intoxicating spell of Andalusian nights” by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla.
● August 13 \ One of history’s most versatile musicians, Quincy Jones amassed 30 Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Awards as the composer/producer behind iconic music like “Soul Bossa Nova,” “P.Y.T.,” and “Stuff Like That”; scores for The Wiz, The Italian Job, and The Color Purple; and the Thriller, Bad, and The Dude albums. Decade-long Jones collaborator Jules Buckley leads the CSO in a tribute to the groundbreaking catalogue of the Chicago-born artist.
● August 14 \ Polymathic conductor and producer Steve Hackman*^ coils together 150 years of musical pathos and tension in his fusion of Brahms’s First Symphony with the equally anxious tracks of Radiohead’s OK Computer, leading the CSO and three guest vocalists to confront both the 1876 fears of following up Beethoven and the 1997 fears of entering the internet age in seamless counterpoint. Note: Radiohead does not perform in this concert.
● August 16 \ The CSO’s 90th summer residency concludes with the nearly 50-year Ravinia tradition of an all-Tchaikovsky evening, including the triumphant exhilaration of the 1812 Overture punctuated with cannons for the finale. Solti Conducting Award winner Earl Lee#^ returns with the irresistible Romeo & Juliet love theme and the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin,
and Stella Chen# brings “brilliant command” (The Strad) to the Violin Concerto.
RECITALS, CHAMBER MUSIC, and GUEST ORCHESTRAS
A wide array of classical music beyond the symphonic repertoire is offered this summer, including recitals, chamber music, and uniquely curated presentations.
● June 5 \ From over 20 years in concert together, Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk# have “developed the sixth sense” for shared musicality (New York Times). This special performance—Bell’s first chamber concert at Ravinia since 1995—features the lush Romanticism of duo sonatas by Schubert, Grieg, and Ravel, plus a solo work each. (MT)
● June 7 \ Alisa Weilerstein, “one of the most characterful cellists around” (The Times), and Inon Barnatan#, “one of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), come together for an afternoon of sweeping emotion, performing Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole, several Shostakovich preludes, and sonatas by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. (MT)
● July 22 \ A Grammy winner and Musical America Instrumentalist of the Year, Augustin Hadelich# returns to “revel in [his] myriad ways of making a phrase come alive on the violin” (Washington Post), fusing Baroque and blues forms in works at the pinnacle of solo music, from Bach and Telemann to Paganini and Ysaÿe to Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. (MT)
● July 26 \ Known as “an orchestra of voices,” Chanticleer shines its “pure and deeply felt singing” (New York Times) on the diverse lyrics, harmonies, and rhythms in the musical heritage of the U.S. The male chorus traces from African American spirituals through bluegrass and folksong to the legacy of those songs in contemporary classics. (MT)
● August 2 \ Music, verse, and visuals coalesce in Black Moon Trio’s* premiere of Lakenotes, a multi-dimensional tribute to the mystery and majesty of Lake Michigan. A new work by StacyGarrop centers this program of richly textured soundscapes and sweeping video that portray our Great Lake as a living, breathing presence. (SKC)
● August 5 \ “There are simply two kinds of string quartets: the Danish, and the others,” writes Boston Classical Review of Danish String Quartet. The 2020 Musical America Ensemble of the Year romps around the jovial final quartet by Beethoven, as well as youthful Mozart and Shostakovich’s profoundly inquisitive Third Quartet. (MT)
● August 9 \ A nearly annual Ravinia guest artist since age 22, pianist Misha Dichter triumphantly marks his 50th season at the festival with the alternating vigor and sentimentality of Brahms and Prokofiev sonatas. He also pays homage to his Polish-immigrant parents with performances of polonaise and mazurka dances by Chopin and Beethoven. (BGH)
● August 9 \ Making his Ravinia debut, beloved Tony- and Grammy-winning singer/actor Hugh Jackman* showcases his “endless charm, energy, and charisma” (New York Stage Review) with the Chicago Philharmonic.
● August 16 \ Hailed as “one of America’s finest artists” (New York Times), Frederica von Stade shares a rare post-retirement performance, joining the “vocally resplendent” (Schmopera) Susan Graham for a truly legendary concert of art song with pianist Kevin Murphy, Artistic Director of the Singers Program at the Steans Institute. (BGH)
● August 19 \ “A Gregory Alan Isakov show is a kind of spell, no matter where you see him play,” writes American Highways. In his first performance at Ravinia, singer/songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov* takes the audience on a journey with the Chicago Philharmonic, under the baton of Christopher Dragon.
● September 3 \ Highly regarded among Chicago’s classical jewels, Music of the Baroque and Dame Jane Glover summon the full voice of their orchestra and chorus in 18th-century grandeur. Handel’s Royal Fireworks music and coronation anthems adorn the spectacle of Steven Isserlis* performing Haydn’s First Cello Concerto.
● September 5 \ A cellist and composer with “tremendous heart, joy and captivating sound” (The Strad), Karen Ouzounian# regularly collaborates with the Silkroad Ensemble, among other singular musicians. Her chamber-music project, Mayrig (“mother” in Armenian), lifts three generations of family voices in songs and stories from their post-genocide home and weaves
them around historic Armenian music and new compositions on resilience, rage, and roots. In this enhanced edition, Mayrig features deeper chamber music with oud, viola, and bass alongside cello, piano, and electronics, plus an immersive, new physical dimension including hand-drawn illustrations integrated with the performance. This is the first production powered by the Steans Institute Alumni Catalyst Fund, which supports artistic innovation by Steans alumni. (SKC)
● September 6 \ “A decisive, powerful player … with exquisite nuance and shadings” (Seattle Times), pianist Olga Kern musters microcosms of drama and comedy, from the masked faces of Schumann’s Carnaval and Rachmaninoff’s breathless miniatures to songful Scriabin études and Beethoven variations, then sparks off hot-jazz Gershwin for a finale. (BGH)● September 23 \ Coldplay’s Chris Martin once called Jacob Collier “the best musician in the world” (Rolling Stone). The six-time Grammy winner comes to one of Ravinia’s most intimate spaces, offering a chance to experience his genre-defying musicality up close. (MT)
FAMILY PROGRAMMING and FILM
Ravinia offers a variety of programs for all ages, including a series of performances specially presented for young children and families.
● August 1 \ Laurie Berkner
● August 8 \ Black Moon Trio: “The Great Lakes”: A companion to Barb Rosenstock and illustrator Jamey Christoph’s picture book The Great Lakes, Black Moon Trio’s concert is a family-friendly journey through the scientific wonder of our five freshwater jewels, offering an approachable way to gain appreciation for their role in sustaining nature and culture. (SKC)
● August 15 \ Okee Dokee Brothers (CSL)
● August 22 \ Divi Roxx Kids (CSL)
● August 23 \ Grease Sing-Along
● August 29 \ JAM Orchestra*: Dr. Seuss Goes to the Opera: JAM Orchestra gives a joyful introduction to opera, featuring professional opera singers in an interactive performance of the complete Green Eggs and Ham and Gertrude McFuzz Dr. Seuss stories paired with playful music to enchant all ages. (MT)
JAZZ and BLUES
● June 3 \ Terence Blanchard & Ravi Coltrane* (MT)
● June 4 \ Stella Cole* (BGH)
● June 6 & 7 \ Wildflowers: Kurt Elling with Fred Hersch (SKC)
● June 13 \ Steans Institute Jazz fellows and Ravinia Jazz Mentors & Scholars from Reach Teach Play (BGH)
● July 14 \ Squirrel Nut Zippers (CSL)
● July 15 \ Harry Connick Jr.
● August 12 \ Joe Bonamassa*
POP, HIP-HOP, RAP, LATIN, and REGGAE
● July 12 \ Billy Idol*
● July 28 \ Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band* with special guest The Docksiders*
● August 4 \ Magic City Hippies* (CSL)
● August 8 \ Chance the Rapper*
● August 11 \ Brian McKnight & Gladys Knight
● August 20 \ Ricky Martin*
● August 27 \ Kool & The Gang* with special guest Morris Day & The Time* and ConFunkShun*
● September 5 \ Rod Stewart* with special guest Richard Marx
● September 13 \ 10th Fiesta Ravinia: Los Tigres del Norte
● September 17 \ Ziggy Marley and Thievery Corporation*
ROCK, INDIE, COUNTRY, and FOLK
● July 17 & 18 \ Paul Simon
● July 26 \ Emmylou Harris & Graham Nash
● July 29 \ The Kody Norris Show* (CSL)
● August 15 \ moe.* and Umphrey’s McGee on the moe.mentUM Tour
● August 21 \ Alabama Shakes* with special guest Liam Kazar*
● August 22 \ Bonnie Raitt
● August 25 \ Deep Purple with special guest Kansas
● August 26 \ Brandi Carlile
● August 28 \ Alabama
● August 29 \ Ray LaMontagne* (Trouble 20th Anniversary Tour) with special guest The Weather Station*
● August 30 \ Miranda Lambert*
● September 6 \ Squeeze with special guest Adam Ant*
● September 12 \ Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas (Arcadia Tour) with special guest Theo Lawrence*