New Year’s Eve trail with show program

The Vienna New Year’s Eve Trail kicks off the year with one stage hotspot after another. The program covers every genre: classical (with crash-course waltz lessons), rock, pop, disco, blues, funk, soul and DJ lineups provide entertainment. At the stroke of midnight, after the last chime of the Pummerin bell, everyone dances into the new year to the sounds of Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz. 

The ringing of bells and the world-famous waltz are broadcast on radio and TV – it is customary throughout Austria to celebrate New Year’s Eve with this accompaniment, whether privately at home or at a party.

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Where the bat flutters

Strauss music is always ever-present at the turn of the year in Vienna. Two opera houses perform the most famous of all operettas, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus, over the New Year period: The Vienna Volksoper (December 31 and January 1) and the Vienna State Opera (December 31, January 3 & 6). Rarely has a work with such immediacy left its mark on Vienna like this one. From the premiere in 1874 onwards, the pieces has been performed incredibly often and almost always over New Year's since 1900. Die Fledermaus takes a light-hearted look at the varieties of erotic and social affectation and gets the bourgeois façades dancing, political and social commentaries included.

The casts of the Serapions Theater and the.bernhard.ensemble employ a completely different approach to storytelling: their production FLEDER.STRAUSS - An Artist’s Life shifts between performance, drama, and theater – a compelling contemporary approach (Nov 25 – Dec 31, 2025, Odeon Theater). 

Bye-bye, Strauss!

Speaking of Strauss, 2025 is the Strauss Year, when Vienna is celebrating the 200th birthday of the Waltz King. It goes without saying that there will be an official closing ceremony for the anniversary year. On December 31, whistling artist, director, and puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan will host the program B(y)e Strauss – Einmal muss geschieden sein at the MusikTheater an der Wien. 

All you need to know about the Strauss Year 2025

© Marija Kanižaj

New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic:live, on TV and on public screens

The most famous concert in the world – the New Year’s Concert – takes place on the morning of January 1st every year in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Music Society (preview and New Year’s Eve concert with the same program are held on December 30 and 31). Yannick Nézet-Séguin will take to the conductor’s podium at the start of 2026. As always, the program will include works by the Strauss dynasty and their contemporaries in an expression of pure joie de vivre. As always, the program includes works by the Strauss dynasty and their contemporaries and represents an expression of pure joie de vivre. You can be there again this year by watching the event on TV in over 90 countries. – The Viennese, for example, consider a hangover breakfast in front of the television watching the New Year’s Concert to be an essential part of the New Year celebrations.

In addition to the popular public screenings of the New Year’s Concert at Stephansplatz and Riesenradplatz in the Prater, there will be a new location this year: there will also be a live broadcast starting at 11:15 a.m. at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts. That’s where this year’s ballet interlude is being filmed.

A few days before that, the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria, conducted by Alfred Eschwé, will get the audience in the mood for the New Year with its New Year’s Eve concert at the Vienna Music Society. In addition to waltzes and polkas, there will be rousing orchestral works, grand overtures and vocal delights from operetta and opera (December 28, 29).

The musicians behind the Vienna Ring Ensemble are members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. This chamber orchestra ensemble will perform another classical New Year’s Eve concert in the atmospheric Brahms Hall of the Vienna Music Society. (December 30 & 31)

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Beethoven and Strauss at the Konzerthaus

A densely packed musical New Year’s Eve program makes the Wiener Konzerthaus the place to be. A performance will be held in every concert hall:

• Strauss Festival Orchestra – “Freuet euch des Lebens!”
• “Alles Liebe” with actress Ursula Strauss and the duo BartolomeyBittmann
• Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Dima Slobodeniouk. Soloists: Christiane Karg, Beth Taylor, Julian Prégardien and Alexander Grassauer
• “Zuagrast”: the Gentlemen Music Club sings in ten languages. Guest: Caroline Athanasiadis
• Midnight Gala Concert – a fireworks display of brass, hosted by Federspiel and featuring VIP guests.

New Year’s Concert by Women Composers

An insider tip: the Ehrbar Saal, a recently renovated acoustic gem where greats such as Brahms, Bruckner, Schoenberg and Mahler once performed. The first day of 2026, however, puts women in the spotlight with the New Year’s Concert of Composers 2026. Andrea Götsch, herself a member of the Vienna Philharmonic, conducts the new resident orchestra, the Ehrphilharmonie Wien.

© WienTourismus/Mafalda Rakoš

Wienerisch and different

There will of course also be some unusual stage art formats on New Year’s Eve: in the crypt of St. Peter’s Church, the operetta ensemble Oper@Tee will delight with a sparkling, witty New Year’s Eve Gala (Dec 30 and 31) and an interpretation of Die Fledermaus with piano accompaniment (Jan 4 and 11). Minimalist and up close and personal to the very small audience.

For the more courageous: the L.E.O – Letztes Erfreuliches Operntheater takes a humorous, entertaining and downright strange approach at the L.E.O. New Year’s Eve Gala, combining opera highlights, chansons, hits and operetta earworms and – watch out! – audience participation. There will also be snacks and drinks (December 31). On Jan 4 and 7, the L.E.O. will showcase the 2026 anniversary honorees in its New Year’s Concert 2026, from Marlene Dietrich to Giuseppe Verdi to Anton Karas.

Finding your favorite event

There is much more happening around the turn of the year on Vienna’s stages – from concerts (Karl Ratzer New Year’s Eve Special at the jazz club Porgy & Bess) to theater (Elisabeth! by Mareike Fallwickl at the Burgtheater, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Theater in der Josefstadt) to musicals (Maria Theresa - The Musical , The Phantom of the Opera). 

Here is the program