The 2026 BBC Proms schedule has been announced, including several featuring composers and performers familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: John Adams, Thomas Adès, Ambrose Akinmusire, Gabriel Kahane, Steve Reich, and Caroline Shaw. Their music or performances will be included in some of the 86 concerts taking place over eight weeks this summer. Every Prom will be broadcast on Radio 3 and BBC Sounds and twenty-four will be broadcast on BBC television and iPlayer.

First up is Caroline Shaw, whose piece and the swallow will be performed by the BBC Singers as part of a mini choral convention at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead on the afternoon of Saturday, July 25. A few weeks later, the BBC Singers join Dame Evelyn Glennie and the Fantasia Orchestra to perform the Sarabande from Shaw's Pulitzer Prize–winning Partita at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Tuesday, August 11.

John Adams, whose 1980 breakthrough work Harmonium will be performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, CBSO Chorus, and Music Director Kazuki Yamada at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, July 26. The 1997 Nonesuch recording of Harmonium ("a glorious swirl of sound," Boston Globe) can also be found in the 2022 forty-disc box set John Adams Collected Works.

Next up is Steve Reich, whose seminal piece Music for 18 Musicians will be performed by Paraorchestra, a collective of disabled and non-disabled musicians, at Bristol Beacon on Friday, August 7, in celebration of the work's 50th anniversary and the composer's upcoming 90th birthday. The 1998 Nonesuch recording of the piece won a Grammy Award. Another essential Reich work, Tehillim, which Nonesuch recorded in 1993, will be performed by Colin Currie Group at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday, September 2. The Group can be heard performing Reich's Traveler's Prayer on the composer's latest album. All of these works can be found in the 2025 twenty-seven disc box set Steve Reich Collected Works.

Two parts of Thomas Adès's piece Dante can be heard over two Proms this summer. First, Purgatorio will be performed by the National Youth Orchestra, conducted by the composer himself, at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, August 8. Inferno will then be performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel at the Hall on Tuesday, August 11. Dudamel and the LA Phil won a Grammy Award for their 2023 Nonesuch premiere recording of the complete Dante. “There is not a second in its 88 minutes that doesn’t delight," exclaimed the Los Angeles Times. "All of it is unexpected and wanted.” The piece had first been performed at the Royal Opera House as part of Wayne McGregor’s The Dante Project for the Royal Ballet, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

Gabriel Kahane's Clarinet Concerto, If love will not swing wide the gates, a BBC co-commission, will be given its European premiere on a program with works by Copland and Stravinsky performed by BBC National Orchestra of Wales, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and conductor Ryan Bancroft at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday, August 17. Kahane's latest Nonesuch album, Heirloom, features a concerto for piano and chamber orchestra by the same name, written by the composer/singer/songwriter for his father, the conductor and pianist Jeffrey Kahane.

Last but certainly not least, trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire will join the BBC Concert Orchestra and others for a celebration of Miles Davis's centenary at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday, August 20. The concert will be recorded for broadcast on BBC TV. Akinmusire's latest album is Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings, a collaboration with guitarist and label mate Mary Halvorson, due June 12.

For tickets to and details on these and all of the Proms this summer, visit bbc.co.uk/proms.