Every summer, 8,000 people pack into a Victorian concert hall in Kensington, wave flags, and sing their hearts out together. Some are laughing. Some are crying. Most have never met before.
This is the Last Night of the Proms — and it is one of the most emotionally charged events in the entire British calendar.
What Are the BBC Proms?
The BBC Promenade Concerts — known simply as the Proms — are the world’s largest classical music festival. They run for eight weeks each summer at the Royal Albert Hall, from mid-July to mid-September.
Over 70 concerts take place in total. Some are grand orchestral evenings featuring the world’s finest conductors and soloists. Others are intimate chamber performances, late-night concerts, or themed nights. There are Proms dedicated to film scores, folk traditions, and world music. But it is the Last Night — always held in mid-September — that people plan their trips across the world to attend.
The Proms were founded in 1895 by conductor Henry Wood. His original vision was radical for its time: brilliant orchestras playing at ticket prices so low that ordinary working people could afford to come. That principle has never changed.
Why Does the Audience Stand?
The Proms have an arrangement unlike any other concert hall in Britain. At the front of the auditorium, the seats are removed entirely. This open space is called the arena, and the people who stand here are called Prommers.
They queue for hours outside — some for an entire day — to pay just a few pounds for a standing ticket. The queue is part of the ritual. People bring camp chairs, flasks of tea, and novels. Regulars know each other by name. On the big nights, the queue stretches around the block well before dawn.
Once inside, Prommers stand, move around, and experience the music differently from those in the tiered seats. They are close to the orchestra. They can feel the sound in a way that seated audiences rarely do. Many say they cannot go back to sitting down after their first time in the arena.
The Hall That Nearly Had a Different Name
The Royal Albert Hall opened in 1871, built as a memorial to Prince Albert — Queen Victoria’s husband, who had died ten years earlier. Victoria laid the foundation stone herself. At the opening ceremony, she was reportedly so overcome with grief that she was unable to give her planned speech. The Lord Mayor had to read it for her instead.
The name she had originally intended was “The Hall of Arts and Sciences.” At the last moment, moved by her loss, the hall was named in Albert’s honour. It has held that name ever since.
For decades after opening, the hall had a notorious acoustic problem. Sounds echoed so badly that audiences joked every piece was performed twice — once by the orchestra, and once by the echo. The issue was finally solved in 1969 when large fibreglass acoustic diffusers were suspended from the ceiling. They were immediately nicknamed the “mushrooms.” The name stuck, and the mushrooms are still there today.
The Last Night Tradition
Nothing in the Proms season prepares you for the Last Night. The evening always ends with the same sequence: Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” (known universally as “Land of Hope and Glory”), a Henry Wood arrangement of “Rule, Britannia!”, and finally Hubert Parry’s “Jerusalem.”
As the final pieces begin, the Prommers produce Union Jacks — and flags from dozens of other countries. They wave them. They sing every word. The conductor turns away from the orchestra and faces the audience directly. The seated gallery joins in.
For those watching from the outside, the whole thing can sound excessive or overwhelming. For those inside, it tends to feel inevitable — as though this building was always designed for exactly this moment, and everything else in the season has been building towards it.
The People Who Come Every Single Night
Behind the spectacle of the Last Night is a quieter community: dedicated Prommers who attend not just one concert but the entire season. Some hold season tickets, which give them entry to every Prom for all eight weeks. These are not wealthy music lovers. Many are students, teachers, retired professionals, and people who have built their whole summer around these concerts for decades.
They have their own rituals. Favourite spots in the arena. Preferred conductors. Concerts they would never miss and concerts they treat as an opportunity to introduce a friend to Brahms for the first time. Ask any long-term Prommer about their first visit and they will give you the exact year, the exact piece, and a particular look that suggests something shifted in them that night and never quite shifted back.
How to Be There Yourself
The Proms run from mid-July to mid-September each year. Last Night tickets sell out almost immediately after going on sale — check the BBC Proms website the moment the new season is announced if you want one. Regular Prom concerts are far more accessible. Arena standing tickets are very affordable and often available on the day at the box office. There is no dress code. The hall is large, the crowd is genuinely mixed in age and background, and newcomers are welcomed warmly by the regulars.
Arrive early enough to explore the building before the concert begins. The curved Victorian galleries, the ornate ironwork, the strange hush that settles over the upper circle in the twenty minutes before the lights go down — all of it is part of the experience. South Kensington Tube station is a five-minute walk away. If you are still working out how to get around the city, our guide to London transport covers everything you need.
If the Proms spark an interest in London’s live music world more broadly, it is worth spending a night at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho — a very different venue, but with the same sense that what is happening there is happening nowhere else on earth, and that you are fortunate to be in the room.
London can feel vast and impersonal at times. The Proms are a reminder that it is not. On the Last Night, in September, inside that round red building in Kensington, eight thousand strangers discover they all want exactly the same thing. And for a few minutes, they get it.
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