Vienna New Year's Concert

What it is

The Vienna New Year's Concert is a classical concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic on the morning of 1 January. It begins at 11:15 in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, the hall the orchestra uses in Vienna. The identical programme is played on 30 and 31 December as well, but only the New Year's Day performance is broadcast. A concert lasts about two and a half hours, and the printed programme lists roughly fourteen to twenty works. It has been held almost every year since 1939.

Music and encores

Waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and marches make up the programme, and pieces by the Strauss family appear every year. Music by other Austrian composers has also been heard, among them Joseph Lanner, Franz von Suppé, Carl Millöcker and Otto Nicolai, the orchestra's founder. Joseph Haydn joined the list in 2009, when the slow movement of his Farewell Symphony marked two hundred years since his death. Composers from elsewhere in Europe, such as Verdi, Wagner and Tchaikovsky, have featured more recently. The first unannounced encore is usually a fast polka or a gallop, and the final two encores are fixed by long custom.

Origins and history

New Year's Day concerts have been given in Vienna since 1838, though not with Strauss music. Between 1928 and 1933 the Musikverein hosted six of them under Johann Strauss III, broadcast by RAVAG. The concert known today dates from 1939, when Clemens Krauss conducted. According to accounts of its founding, it was arranged under Joseph Goebbels's propaganda ministry, with backing from the Nazi party leader in Vienna, Baldur von Schirach. It was dedicated to a winter relief fund and meant to lift morale and raise money. That first performance fell on 31 December, the one occasion it has not been given on New Year's Day, and the programme was entirely Johann Strauss II.

Conductors over the years

Clemens Krauss returned to the podium after the war and led most concerts until 1954, with Josef Krips taking 1946 and 1947. Willi Boskovsky, the orchestra's concertmaster, then directed the concert for twenty-five years, finishing in 1979. The next year brought Lorin Maazel, the first conductor from outside Austria, and the orchestra began inviting a different guest annually. Herbert von Karajan was the first of these, in 1987. Later names include Claudio Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel and Franz Welser-Möst.

Staging and broadcast

The Austrian broadcaster ORF carries the concert on radio and television, and the Eurovision network passes it to stations across Europe and further afield. It reaches listeners on PBS in the United States, NHK in Japan, CCTV in China and MetroTV in Indonesia, among others, and since 2006 it has also gone to several countries in southern Africa. Audiences have been counted at roughly fifty million people. Seats are hard to come by: people register a year ahead for the ticket draw, and some places stay in Austrian families. Television adds ballet from the Vienna State Ballet, filmed at Austrian landmarks; between 1980 and 2013 Sanremo in Liguria supplied the hall's flowers.

How Vienna New Year's Concert is kept

The morning follows a shape that regular listeners know. The orchestra plays the announced programme of waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and marches, usually fourteen to twenty pieces. Three encores follow. The first is unannounced, often a quick polka or gallop. Then comes The Blue Danube, whose opening the audience interrupts with applause, after which the conductor and players offer a New Year's greeting in German. The Radetzky March closes the concert, the audience clapping in time, and by custom the conductor starts the orchestra before reaching the podium. The whole event lasts about two and a half hours.

When and where

The concert is held each year on the morning of 1 January, at 11:15. The orchestra plays the same programme on 30 and 31 December beforehand, so the New Year's Day performance, the one broadcast, is the third hearing. The first concert, in 1939, was the only one given on 31 December instead of New Year's Day.

It takes place in Vienna, in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, the building the Vienna Philharmonic uses as its home. The concert has been given there since 1939. Its following reaches far past Austria: the broadcast goes to most of Europe and to countries in Asia, the Americas, Africa and Oceania, and the ballet interludes are filmed at Austrian landmarks such as Schönbrunn Palace and Schloss Esterházy.

What Vienna New Year's Concert means

For many listeners the concert marks the turn of the year, a shared hour of waltzes broadcast at the same time across borders. Applause breaking into The Blue Danube, and the greeting that follows, have become the audience's own part in the music. That greeting was added by Willi Boskovsky after the 1954 concert, when applause interrupted three pieces. The Radetzky March, clapped along to since 1958, closes the morning. The programming of Constanze Geiger's music in 2025, and of Josephine Amann-Weinlich and Florence Price in 2026, has widened the concert's range of composers.

Questions people ask about Vienna New Year's Concert

See also

MummingA medieval European custom of masked house-to-house visits, performances and seasonal revelry.Christmas marketA seasonal street market held during Advent in German-speaking regions and beyond, featuring stalls, food, and crafts.MolybdomancyPouring molten lead or tin into water, then reading the shape as an omenChristmas carolFestive songs and hymns sung during the Christmas season and door to door

Good reading and sources

• The New Year tradition with a dark historyBBC, Article
• The New Year tradition with a dark historyBBC, Article

• Vienna New Year's Concert on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.