The EFG London Jazz Festival opens with Jazz Voice, a line-up of singers fronting Guy Barker and the festival orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.
Jazz Voice, the gala that opens the EFG London Jazz Festival, takes place at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Friday 13 November 2026. Guy Barker conducts the festival orchestra behind a line-up of singers.
The festival grew out of the Jazz Week that the London Borough of Camden added to its arts festival in 1970. When that festival closed in the early 1990s, Serious, the company that had produced it, created the London Jazz Festival in 1992.
Its first opening party, at Union Chapel in Islington in May 1993, was headlined by New Orleans’ Rebirth Brass Band. EFG Private Bank has been title sponsor since 2013.
The festival now runs ten days and more than 300 shows, from basement bars to the city’s major concert halls. Jazz Voice is its set piece at the Royal Festival Hall, which has hosted leading jazz musicians since it opened in 1951.
Barker arranges the evening for the EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra. This year’s soloists are Lizz Wright, Liv Warfield, Rita Wilson, Emma Smith, Marvin Muoneké and James Emmanuel, with more to follow. Jumoké Fashola hosts.