One of Seattle’s most-visited performing arts venues will be taking a brief intermission this summer.
Benaroya Hall, the longtime home of the Seattle Symphony on Third Avenue and Union Street, will close for six weeks beginning in July for the final phase of a $20 million renovation to the building’s entrances, lobby and public-facing spaces, the Symphony announced Thursday. (No performance spaces are part of the renovation plans.)
While some work will start while Benaroya Hall remains open throughout the spring, the downtown music venue will be fully closed to the public, and no performances will take place between mid-July — the close of the Symphony’s current season — and the end of August.
The Symphony’s last July performance will be “How To Train Your Dragon in Concert with the Seattle Symphony” from July 10-12. All areas will reopen in time for the Symphony’s 2026-2027 season opening night on Sept. 19, a concert led by music director Xian Zhang and featuring pianist Yuja Wang performing Piano Concerto No. 3, followed by the opening night gala.
“The temporary closure has been strategically scheduled to a period of time with the least amount of disruption to patrons and performances,” said Alison Ward, a publicist for the Symphony.
The Symphony usually doesn’t perform much during the summer, but Benaroya Hall — which opened in 1998 and is owned by the city — can be rented for other events and performances, such as last year’s concerts by Paul Simon and Ben Platt as well as the annual performances of Seattle’s Teen Summer Musical and other programming.
For the last three seasons, Benaroya Hall has averaged 19 ticketed concerts or events between mid-July and the end of August, Ward said.
The renovation is meant to make Benaroya Hall’s public spaces, as well as its main lobby, more welcoming and modern and attract more people both to the building itself and to downtown more broadly.
The refresh, designed by local firm Mithun, includes a new cafe with expanded seating, a new welcome desk and “ticket concierge,” a new upstairs lounge and a community room designed to expand education and community events. Its main lobby will get a new central bar, new seating and updated carpet.
The $20 million capital campaign for the project was supported by major local philanthropists, including the Friday Foundation, Norcliffe Foundation, Leslie and Dale Chihuly, the Gates Foundation, Allen Family Philanthropies (formerly the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation) and Linda Nordstrom.
Last summer’s phase one of construction focused on exterior work, including installing new digital marquees and replacing unused doors along Third Avenue with windows. The latter was to prepare for the fixed seating that will be installed along the windows in phase two.
That phase will start in April, but there will be no impact on performances, Ward said. All construction will occur behind construction walls, including demolition of existing spaces and framing of the new. (More information will be shared with patrons in the coming weeks, Ward said.)
Music director Xian Zhang directs six more evening programs this winter and spring, including compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, Gershwin and Mahler.
For the 2026-2027 season, Xian will take the podium with the Symphony for performances of works by Mozart, Haydn, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky, among others. Also on the calendar are Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and world premieres of Steven Mackey’s “Concerto for Orchestra” and Joe Pereira’s “Timpani Concerto.”
In October, works by local composer Samuel Adams, “Etudes for Piano” and the U.S. Premiere of “Devotions for String Quartet and Percussion,” will open the Octave 9 Series. Another calendar highlight includes Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet,” wherein Tacoma-raised operatic superstar J’Nai Bridges makes her long-overdue Seattle Symphony debut.
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