National Symphony Orchestra will play at 6 DC-area venues next season as Kennedy Center shuts

Forced from the Kennedy Center following approval of a reconstruction project by allies of President Donald Trump, the National Symphony Orchestra will split its 2026-27 season among six venues in Washington, D.C., and the capital’s suburbs.

The NSO made its delayed 2026-27 season announcement Tuesday, 5 1/2 weeks before its opening concert on Sept. 26 and five months later than the release of its 2025-26 schedule.

The Kennedy Center, named by Congress after President John F. Kennedy, was taken over in 2025 by a board of Trump loyalists who added his name to the complex, only to be ordered to remove it by a federal judge. The board said last week it intends to close the complex for a two-year renovation and add Trump’s name to the building’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”

NSO tickets sales declined from 72% of capacity in 2024 to 58% in 2025 to 41% last season, The Washington Post reported. The NSO did not confirm the figures.

“For us to perform and to be somehow disconnected with the Kennedy Center probably will convince some of the audience who stayed away from the center to come back to our concerts, and not only that, even to increase the number of the audience,” music director Gianandrea Noseda said in an interview with The Associated Press. “At least this is my hope.”

Noseda was the only NSO official who commented on the record about the season announcement. Trump’s name was included twice in the joint statement by the NSO and the Kennedy Center, which cited his “strategic direction” as Kennedy Center chair and “vision for a revitalized institution.”

Entering his 10th season as music director, Noseda is signed through the NSO’s 100th anniversary season in 2030-31.

Tickets go on sale Aug. 28, leaving little time to start rebuilding an audience.

There are 64 scheduled NSO classical concerts in the upcoming season, including 56 in the D.C. area and eight on a U.S. tour from April 20-30. The total matches 2025-26, when there were 62 at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall and two on tour.

Next season will include 24 concerts at George Washington’s Lisner Auditorium in D.C. (1,350 available seats), 13 at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, (1,925), nine at Northern Virginia Community College’s Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center in Alexandria (900), eight at George Mason’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, (1,850), and two each at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park (1,050) and D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre (1,150).

“We’ll increase the ability of the orchestra to adjust very quickly to the acoustics. I’d like to think of this year of the National Symphony Orchestra as a regional touring orchestra,” Noseda said. “So we will be on tour and we will take and bring the music where the people are instead of inviting them to where we perform.”

Capacity of the venues will be below that of the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, which had up to 2,465 available seats.

The orchestra still intends to rehearse at the Kennedy Center during the reconstruction and keep its office and music library there.

Noseda will conduct 20 concerts at five of the venues during his 10 weeks in the D.C. area starting with a gala Sept. 26 at Strathmore, and he also will lead the tour performances. He said just two of his programs were changed from his original plans, substituting Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 for Gioachino Rossini’s “William Tell” overture and one Ottorino Respighi composition for another, both to account for a smaller stage that could accommodate fewer musicians.

Five holiday performances of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” are the only concerts that require a chorus.

“I honestly would have preferred not to go through this, but the situation is the way it is and we have to be proactive,” Noseda said.