In September 2025, François-Xavier Roth will take up his post as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the SWR Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Teodor Currentzis, who led the orchestra from 2018 to 2024.
The regular fixtures of the SWR Symphonieorchester are the SWR’s own series of concerts in Stuttgart, Freiburg and Mannheim, as well as performances at the Donaueschingen Festival for New Music and the Schwetzingen SWR Festival. Since 2020, the SWR Symphonieorchester is the orchestra in residence at the Pentecost Festival in Baden-Baden. Invitations have resulted in repeat performances at the Salzburg Festival and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg as well as in Berlin, Dortmund, Essen, Frankfurt, Cologne, Edinburgh, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Vienna and Warsaw.
Internationally conductors in demand such as Herbert Blomstedt, Peter Eötvös (†), Christoph Eschenbach, Pablo Heras-Casado, Manfred Honeck, Jakub Hrůša, Eliahu Inbal, Ingo Metzmacher, Kent Nagano, Sir Roger Norrington, Jonathan Nott, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Eva Ollikainen, Michael Sanderling and Giedrė Šlekytė have already worked with the SWR Symphonieorchester. Among the top-class soloists are Leif Ove Andsnes, Yulianna Avdeeva, Renaud Capuçon, Sol Gabetta, Martin Grubinger, Isabelle Faust, Vilde Frang, Hilary Hahn, Janine Jansen, Alexandre Kantorow, Sabine Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud, Fazil Say, Gil Shaham, Antoine Tamestit and Christian Tetzlaff. Since September 2024, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has been the SWR Symphony Orchestra's Artistic Partner for two seasons
Every year the comprehensive music education programme of the SWR Symphonieorchester reaches about 20,000 children, adolescents and adults in the SWR broadcasting area, and numerous concert broadcasts on SWR Kultur and streams on SWR.de/so allow many music lovers around the world to participate in the symphony orchestra's concerts.
Since 2024, the SWR Symphony Orchestra has been an official partner of “La Maestra”, the most important international competition for young female conductors.