Cleveland Orchestra Musicians Walk Out, Cancelling Concerts and Jeopardizing European Tour

CLEVELAND — Musicians with the Cleveland Orchestra walked out just after midnight Friday local time after contract talks failed, triggering immediate concert cancellations and casting doubt over the opening of the ensemble’s 2026-27 season and a European tour set to begin Oct. 2.

The strike took effect around 12:00 to 12:01 a.m. Sept. 25 in Cleveland. The orchestra’s public negotiations page said at least two performances were canceled immediately: a Friday concert at the University of Michigan and a Saturday concert at Severance Music Center, the orchestra’s home venue.

The labor dispute follows months of bargaining rather than a sudden collapse in talks. The orchestra said negotiations began in July. Its previous collective bargaining agreement expired Aug. 30, and both sides agreed to extend that contract through Sept. 23 while talks continued. Reporting said the sides held about 11 bargaining sessions before the strike. Musicians had already authorized a walkout in early September if no deal was reached.

The central dispute is over pay and health care. The Musical Arts Association, which manages the orchestra, said the union demanded total salary increases of 25% over three years during a Sept. 21 bargaining session and called that level of increase unsustainable. Management also said it had room to improve its offer and that the union went on strike without presenting a salary counterproposal.

“Despite our clear statement at the negotiating table that the latest offer we presented was far from being our final offer, the union refused to present a counterproposal on salary and instead decided to strike,” management said on the orchestra’s negotiations page. “The union demanded 25 percent in total salary increases over three years, which is simply not sustainable for the institution.”

Musicians, represented publicly by negotiating committee chair and violinist Elayna Duitman, have said pay and health care costs remain unresolved. They say the orchestra’s base salary is $162,916 and argue that compensation has not kept pace with inflation or with peer orchestras.

“Over the last six years we have lost 10 percent of our purchasing power to inflation, and 20 percent relative to our peer orchestras,” Duitman said, according to Axios Cleveland.

Orchestra President and CEO André Gremillet also framed the dispute as a question of long-term affordability, saying management could not agree to salary commitments it believed would weaken the institution financially. He told Ideastream that while concert cancellations would be damaging, “it would be worse for the institution to commit to salaries that we can’t afford in the future and that will undermine the institution.”

For now, the public impact is immediate. Two concerts are already off the calendar, and the strike now threatens the official start of the season as well as the orchestra’s planned European tour, which is reported to include about 15 concerts beginning Oct. 2.

As of Friday, the dispute was still being fought at the bargaining table and in public statements, not in court. No lawsuits or labor board actions were identified in the available reporting. That leaves audiences, donors and touring presenters waiting to see whether the two sides can quickly return to negotiations and salvage performances in Cleveland and abroad.