About the Royal Albert Hall

The Royal Albert Hall was opened by Queen Victoria on 29 March 1871 and named after Prince Albert, her husband, who died before it was built. Building began in 1867, the year of its Royal Charter, to a design by two Royal Engineers, Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Scott. It's Grade I listed, and today it's a charity, with no public funding for its running costs, putting on around 400 events a year in the main hall.

Why do people own seats at the Royal Albert Hall?

To pay for the building, seats were sold to subscribers with the right to use them for 999 years. Those rights are still held: 1,256 seats belong to private Seatholders, which is why some seats, and many Boxes, aren't always on sale.

The Grand Organ

When it was unveiled, the Grand Organ was the biggest musical instrument in the world, and its builder, Henry Willis, called it "The Voice of Jupiter". It has 9,999 pipes, the largest 42ft high, and the whole organ is 70ft high and weighs 150 tonnes.

Notable past productions

• The BBC Proms, every summer
• Cirque du Soleil, every January for about thirty years, including Alegria (2005), Kooza (2013) and Kurios (2023). Kurios returns in January 2027, and 2028 will be Cirque's last January season here
• The Royal Variety Performance, held here from 2022 to 2025

Other venues to know

Nothing else we cover comes close in size. The biggest West End theatres hold fewer than half as many people:

• London Coliseum, 2,359 seats on St Martin's Lane, home of English National Opera and English National Ballet
• London Palladium, 2,292 seats on Argyll Street by Oxford Circus, home of the pantomime every Christmas