The Southbank Centre announces Classical Mixtape: a multi-venue takeover bringing together over 200 musicians from six orchestras for one night only

The Southbank Centre today announces Classical Mixtape: A Live Takeover (Thu 5 Feb 2026), a multi-venue event bringing together more than 200 musicians from six orchestras for a night of classical music’s greatest hits. Presented as a series of live, looping performances, the evening allows audiences to shuffle and repeat their experience of the evening’s music, mixing their own mixtape, while encountering some of classical music’s most well-known works across the Southbank Centre site.

In an unprecedented first, the event will see all of the Southbank Centre’s Resident Orchestras – Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Philharmonia Orchestra – perform across a single night at the multi-arts centre in its 75th anniversary year for a first-of-its-kind event curated for Under 30s audiences. Chineke! Orchestra will perform with players from Chineke! Junior Orchestra, while the London Sinfonietta will be joined by students from the Royal Academy of Music.

Classical Mixtape offers a flexible way for audiences to experience classical music on their own terms as they roam across the site, discovering repertoire spanning 600 years of music, including Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the symphonic score of The Lord of the Rings and a historically-informed ‘oompah band’ performance. With 20-minute programmes running on repeat, the event operates like a live classical mixtape, enabling audiences to mix “tracks” by choosing the order and number of times to enjoy each performance or individual piece of music.