The SSO Christmas Concert 2026: Two Festive Nights at the Esplanade

What you need to know, in short: the Singapore Symphony Orchestra Christmas Concert plays two nights at the Esplanade Concert Hall, on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 December 2026, each at 7:30pm. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra is joined by the Singapore Symphony Chorus, the Youth Choir and the Children's Choir, conducted by Associate Conductor Nathanaël Iselin. The programme mixes music from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker with John Rutter's Gloria, Thomas Hewitt Jones's A Christmas Cracker and a traditional Christmas medley singalong. Tickets run from S$48 to S$228 before SISTIC booking fees, and both concerts are also streamed live, so the night works even if you cannot be in the hall.

The programme

This is a Christmas concert in the full sense: orchestral favourites, big choral set pieces, and a part of the night where the audience joins in. Music from The Nutcracker gives the evening its Tchaikovsky centrepiece, the dances and scenes that have become the sound of Christmas itself. John Rutter's Gloria brings the choirs to the front, and Thomas Hewitt Jones's A Christmas Cracker adds a contemporary festive piece. Alongside them sits the traditional Christmas medley singalong, the point in the night where the hall stops only listening and starts singing too. If the rest of your December is lights and markets, this is the evening that supplies the music.

Who is on stage

It is a full stage. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra plays with three choirs alongside it: the Singapore Symphony Chorus, the Youth Choir and the Children's Choir, singers across the generations in the one programme. Associate Conductor Nathanaël Iselin conducts both nights. The concert runs about 1 hour 45 minutes including a 20 minute intermission, which makes it an easy fit in a December evening: long enough to feel like an occasion, short enough to leave the rest of the night open afterwards.

Tickets, and what the fees add

Tickets are priced at S$48, S$68, S$88, S$108, S$168 and S$228, before SISTIC booking fees. The fees are tiered by ticket price: S$4 for tickets from S$40.01 to S$50, S$5 for tickets above S$50 and S$6 for tickets above S$70. So the cheapest seat in the house, at S$48, carries the S$4 fee, and the figure that matters when you book is the total after fees, not the headline price. Both nights start at the same time and play the same programme, so the choice between Friday and Saturday is a diary choice, not a musical one: pick the night that fits around the rest of your festive plans.

Watching from home, and planning the night

You do not need a seat to hear it. Both concerts are also streamed live on the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's YouTube channel and on Mediacorp's meWatch, so anyone outside Singapore, or anyone whose December is already full, can still watch on the night itself rather than catching up afterwards.

If you are going in person, treat the concert as the seated centre of a festive evening. December around Marina Bay is the heart of Singapore's Christmas season, and this site's Christmas Wonderland and the Bay guide covers the lights, trains and markets side of it, while the December 2026 page sets out the full month. The concert is the part of that season you sit down for: indoors, unhurried, and a calm contrast to the crowds outside. Visitors making a trip of it should sort the room early, because the same December weeks carry the marathon, the stadium concerts and the countdown crowds.

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One gap this guide fills, to end on: this site's Christmas coverage has run on lights, trains and markets until now, and no article has covered classical Christmas music. If your idea of Christmas music is a full orchestra and a stage full of singers rather than a playlist in a shopping mall, these are the two nights to build around.

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