English National Ballet's Nutcracker returns to the London Coliseum from 17 December 2026 to 10 January 2027, with the company's Philharmonic playing Tchaikovsky live.
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s original story is not a children’s tale. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, from 1816, has a girl mutilating her hands on a toy, a seven-headed rodent, a nephew under a curse; Dumas softened it for the French, and Petipa softened Dumas, and by the time it reached the stage in 1892 almost nothing frightening was left. Every production since has had to decide how much of Hoffmann to put back.
Aaron S. Watkin and Arielle Smith made this version for English National Ballet in 2024 and moved it: Clara’s Christmas Eve happens in Edwardian London rather than Hoffmann’s Nuremberg, which puts the party in a city the audience can see out of the window. Dick Bird designed it. Aaron S. Watkin and Arielle Smith made this version for English National Ballet in 2024, in Watkin’s first season directing the company, and moved the whole thing.
It returns to the London Coliseum from Thursday 17 December 2026 to Sunday 10 January 2027, twenty-five days across Christmas and the new year, with the English National Ballet Philharmonic playing live at every performance and over a hundred dancers and musicians on and under the stage. Two hours with one interval. Age guidance is five and over, with one exception the company names: the two o’clock on 9 January, where under-fives are admitted — which is the performance to book if the point is a child’s first ballet.