After raising an all-time-record $3.45 million at its first NSO Gala, the new leadership of the Kennedy Center continues to defy expectations. 

Today the arts venue announced a major event on its calendar: the Vienna Philharmonic has added a stop in Washington to its American tour, a single concert at the Kennedy Center on March 4, 2026. This will be the first time the legendary Austrian ensemble has been presented solely by the Kennedy Center.

Andris Nelsons will conduct Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2, one of three programs the orchestra will perform next year in Boston, New York, and Florida. “We are honored to welcome the Vienna Philharmonic to the Kennedy Center,” said KC president Richard Grenell. “Audiences will experience iconic works performed with the orchestra’s legendary artistry and Viennese sound.”

In the wake of President Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center in February, some classical music organizations decided to discontinue their regular practice of presenting programs there. The largest of these organizations was Washington Performing Arts, which moved many of its biggest concerts to the Music Center at Strathmore in the Maryland suburbs, including the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Ironically, the Kennedy Center will now present the orchestra that Washington Performing Arts last brought to Washington (in 2012).

And there may be more to come. Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice-president of public relations, stated “Our door is always open to world-renowned artists in order to bring Kennedy Center patrons the best of the best.”

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