With its 2026-2027 season, Flagey is not simply choosing an artistic direction, but a pronounced cultural positioning. Under the banner of the First Viennese School, the Brussels music venue explores how music from the past remains surprisingly relevant in a world that is once again balancing between uncertainty, geopolitical tension and the desire for stability.
The fact that Flagey chooses the First Viennese School as its guiding theme is significant. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert wrote their music at a historical turning point: between enlightenment and revolution, between aristocratic order and modern citizenship. Their work therefore carries not only formal elegance, but also a deep awareness of social change. The season thus reads as an attempt to ask questions anew about today's world through that music.
Central to it is Ludwig van Beethoven, whose death in 1827 – exactly two hundred years ago next season – will be commemorated. But Flagey is not programming a Beethoven museum here. His music appears as a living force: simultaneously rebellious, comforting, visionary and fundamentally human. The question that implicitly runs through the season is not only musical but also political: what does humanism still mean in an era of polarization, war and cultural fragmentation? Few composers have captured the tension between individual freedom and collective utopia as sharply in music as Beethoven has.
Giltburg completes, Lewis builds on
One of the great pillars of the season will undoubtedly be the completion of Boris Giltburg's integral performance of Beethoven's piano sonatas. The winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2013 has profiled himself in recent years internationally as one of the most deeply felt Beethoven interpreters of his generation and is now concluding an ambitious trajectory that began last season at Flagey.
He performs as a soloist on 25 March and 6 June 2027. Particularly noteworthy, however, is especially the new concert format with which Flagey is launching for the first time in Brussels: after a first part with piano sonatas, a symphonic section follows together with the Brussels Philharmonic (26 and 27 March, 4 and 5 June 2027). That is more than a programming device. By combining the intimacy of the sonatas with the symphonic dimension of Beethoven's oeuvre and influence, Flagey attempts to make the tension arc of his music tangible. With Beethoven, these two worlds are never completely separate from each other.
Paul Lewis will also serve as artist in residence next season. The British pianist, internationally renowned for his interpretations of Beethoven and Schubert, will begin at Flagey a long-running project around Mozart's piano sonatas, which he will also record there (27 January 2027). This underscores how Flagey has developed in recent years into an internationally valued recording venue, in part thanks to the exceptional acoustics of Studio 4.
With this programming, Flagey further confirms his increasingly clear profile within the Belgian concert landscape. While Bozar often focuses on international prestige projects and deSingel works more strongly interdisciplinarily, Flagey is positioning itself increasingly emphatically as a venue where repertoire, recording culture, jazz, education and artistic reflection flow into one another.
Uchida, Schiff and Zimmermann
One of the most striking names on the poster is undoubtedly Mitsuko Uchida. Her debut at Flagey on 27 November 2026 can certainly be called a cultural event. Uchida is regarded worldwide as one of the most important Mozart interpreters of recent decades, but has also developed a strong affinity with Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. Her programme – Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Schoenberg alongside each other – promises to be more than just a recital. It will be a musical reflection on tradition and innovation, on what composers inherit from their predecessors and what they consciously leave behind.
It is striking how often Schubert appears in the programming of next season. As a transitional figure between classical clarity and romantic introspection, he may well be the most modern voice of all.
On 17 March 2027, András Schiff devotes an entire recital to Haydn, perhaps still the most underestimated of the great Viennese classics. Frank Peter Zimmermann makes his Flagey debut on 13 April in the company of Ukrainian pianist Dmytro Choni, for their only concert in Belgium this season. Their programme confronts Schubert with repertoire from the Second Viennese School and thus again places past and modernity in opposition.
Alexander Melnikov completes the list of great piano names during the Flagey Piano Days with Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 20 in D minor, KV 466, together with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège (12 February 2027). Also making their debut at Flagey is the Quatuor Ébène. From 20 to 22 November 2026, the renowned French ensemble will open its Beethoven String Quartet Cycle there – music that still ranks among the most visionary that the Western repertoire has produced.
Flagey Piano Days and Philip Glass
The Flagey Piano Days meanwhile confirm their position as one of the rare Belgian piano festivals where international top pianists do not pass through as loose stars, but are placed within a substantively developed trajectory.
From 10 to 14 February 2027, Flagey once again brings together diverse pianistic voices. Roman Borisov and the Quatuor Modigliani open with Debussy and Franck (10 February, 6:30 pm), while Marc-André Hamelin later that evening combines Weinberg, Debussy and Chopin. Jonathan Fournel joins the Brussels Philharmonic on 11 February. Lucas and Arthur Jussen bring Bach, Brahms and Gershwin together on one programme, while Katia and Marielle Labèque close with miniatures by among others forgotten female composers alongside Mendelssohn, Fauré and Ravel.
Noteworthy moreover is the tribute to Philip Glass, who turns ninety in 2027. Vanessa Wagner, Danae Dörken and Pascal Schumacher place his minimalist aesthetic in a contemporary context. This too is telling: Flagey uses the festival not only to celebrate the canonical piano repertoire, but also to continually question its boundaries.
Jazz without borders
Jazz too receives prominence again within the season. The Brussels Jazz Festival (14–23 January 2027) chooses the Dutch bassist Louise van den Heuvel as an artist in residence who effortlessly navigates between jazz, electronics and improvisation. Her residency comprises three completely different projects: a concert with Kit Downes, Otis Sandsjö and Sun-Mi Hong (15 January), an immersive listening experience with brunch together with Bert Cools (17 January) and new work with her ensemble Sonic Hug (21 January). That these projects differ so strongly from one another is not a lack of focus but precisely the point. Van den Heuvel shows how open and hybrid the concept of jazz has become today.
International names are not lacking either. The Tunisian oud player and composer Anouar Brahem continues on 8 October 2026 his subtle dialogue between Arabic musical traditions and European world jazz. His work on the ECM label made him in recent decades a key figure within contemporary world jazz. L'Antidote too brings a distinctive intercultural project, with Iranian percussionist Bijan Chemirani, Lebanese pianist Rami Khalifé and Albanian cellist Redi Hasa (29 October 2026). For Flagey, the concert is one of only two Belgian stops of the tour.
Particularly meaningful moreover is the fiftieth anniversary of the Lundis d'Hortense. The organisation has since 1976 played a crucial role in the development and international reach of the Belgian jazz scene – a merit that can hardly be overestimated in a country that has produced so remarkably much jazz talent in recent decades. The anniversary concert on 1 October 2026 comprises a carte blanche for Nathalie Loriers and her project 1, 2, 3 Piano, followed by the Belgian Jazz Ensemble with Tutu Puoane.
The season ends with two concerts that explicitly centre female artistic voices. Both Children of Simone (28 May 2027) and Dee Dee Bridgewater (31 May 2027) reread the legacy of Nina Simone and Max Roach from a contemporary perspective.
Bach, Goldberg and the next generation
Lovers of early music also get their fill. Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent present Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium on 15 December 2026 in the run-up to the holidays. Flagey also pays attention to Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, the harpsichordist after whom Bach's famous Goldberg Variations were named and who was born three hundred years ago in 2027. Both TrioFenix (16 October 2026) and guitarists Thibaut Garcia and Antoine Morinière (20 October 2026) present new perspectives on that monument from the keyboard repertoire.
As in previous seasons, Flagey continues to invest strongly in young talent. Within the series Piknik and Jonge Wolven, various laureates of the Queen Elisabeth Competition appear again, including Valère Burnon, Uladzislau Khandohi, Mirabelle Kajenjeri, Sergey Tanin and Arthur Hinnewinkel. Internationally noted young musicians such as Dmitry Shishkin also get a place.
Projects such as Academix, Piano & Sand and the collaboration with El Sistema and ReMuA aim to let children and young people actively experience music – in this too Flagey increasingly distinguishes itself from a classical concert venue.
More than a concert hall
The 2026-2027 season ultimately shows above all how Flagey today is much more than a concert hall alone. The iconic art-deco building on the Elsene Ponds – originally designed as a radio building – is increasingly growing into a cultural meeting place where classical music, jazz, film, education and social reflection intersect. Festivals such as Anima, Klarafestival, the Brussels Short Film Festival, the Queen Elisabeth Competition and Festival Musiq3 confirm that central position within the Belgian cultural landscape.
Flagey presents Beethoven not as a reassuring monument from the past, but as a composer who two hundred years later still asks uncomfortable questions.