Cheltenham Festivals has an extra reason to celebrate in its 80th year, as Cheltenham Music Festival doubled its audience.
With a bumper programme to celebrate the festival's big birthday and its new artistic director's inaugural year, audience numbers at the 2025 event were double what they were in 2024.
This year's programme featured homegrown talent including Britain's Got Talent stars Braimah and Isata Kanneh-Mason, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Dames Imogen Cooper and Sarah Connolly, to the most exciting classical performers from across the globe including Canadian opera star Gerald Finley, Seckou Keita from Senegal, the Idrîsî Ensemble, Germany's Vision String Quartet and Santiago Sanchez from Uruguay.
Audiences voted with their feet with full houses for concerts at Gloucester Cathedral, Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham Town Hall and DEYA Brewery, with events achieving critical acclaim from national titles like The Times and The Telegraph, too.
The festival hosted its first-ever Relaxed Concert for Families in 2025, where families with at least one member with additional needs were able to enjoy classical music in an accessible way; while the free '...around town' programme brought classical music to unconventional locations across town, from department stores to bars.
Cheltenham Music Festival's artistic director, Jack Bazalgette, said: 'To see so many thousands attend our concerts, recitals, gigs and workshops has been so joyful.
'It’s been a real tribute to the quality of our performers and programme – but also, I think, to the esteem and affection in which Cheltenham is still held, 80 years on.
'Our ability to bring world-class talent to our concerts has really fused this year with our focus on broadening access to and interest in classical music to create a really brilliant anniversary year.
'To see the audience grow so much gives us real excitement for our ninth decade! There’s just something so special about Cheltenham and Gloucestershire... they are just so well set up for a music festival.
'We're going strong – and we'll be here for the next 80 years, no doubt.'
