Michael Haefliger

Michael Haefliger is an internationally renowned arts manager and musician as well as the Executive and Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival. Born in Berlin in 1961, Haefliger began learning violin and piano at the age of six and completed his violin studies at The Juilliard School of Music in New York in 1983. He subsequently earned an Executive MBA degree from the University of St. Gallen in 1999, completing its interdisciplinary management program across the schools of Economics, Law, and Social Sciences.

From the beginning of his career, Haefliger has been active at leading European music festivals. As a concert violinist in the early 1980s, he performed at the festivals in Lucerne, Interlaken, and Spoleto, among others. He made his debut at Lucerne Festival in 1985 — which at that time was known as the Internationale Musikfestwochen Luzern — performing alongside his brother Andreas. In 1986, he co-founded the «Young Artists in Concert» Festival in Davos, which he directed until 1998. From 1996 to 1998, he was also Artistic Director of Collegium Novum Zürich.

Michael Haefliger has served as Executive and Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival since 1999. Over more than two decades, he has played a decisive role in its evolution, securing the Festival’s place among the foremost international presenters of classical music. His tenure will conclude at the end of 2025.

Since his appointment to the position at the beginning of 1999, Michael Haefliger has introduced numerous new initiatives at Lucerne Festival. He has expanded its commitment to contemporary music and family concerts and has additionally developed innovative concert formats such as the 40min series. He has given a special focus to young artists by establishing the Debut recital series and programming concerts that feature youth orchestras. In partnership with sponsors and foundations, Haefliger has also initiated important awards such as the UBS Young Artist Award, the Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes, Roche Commissions, Roche Young Commissions, and the Fritz Gerber Award. Since 1999, nearly 400 world premieres have been presented at the Festival, with more than 280 commissions awarded to contemporary composers.

Haefliger has implemented programming based on a particular theme for each summer that highlights artistic and sociopolitical topics. At the beginning of his tenure, he revitalized the programming through such themes as «Myth», «Metamorphosis», and «Creation». He sparked fresh discussion about the role of women in the music world in 2016 with the theme «PrimaDonna». Among other recent themes: «Power» in 2019, the socially relevant topic of «Diversity» in 2022, and «Curiosity» in 2024, which included a spotlight on contemporary music.

Alongside various initiatives, Michael Haefliger founded the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Claudio Abbado in 2003 and the Lucerne Festival Academy with Pierre Boulez in 2004. Following the deaths of both co-founders, he ushered in a new era for these two institutions in 2016 by appointing Riccardo Chailly as the new Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Wolfgang Rihm as Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy. In 2021, he founded the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), a leading ensemble for contemporary music that also performs abroad at major festivals and venues.

Following the devastating earthquake in Japan in the fall of 2011, Haefliger partnered with Sir Anish Kapoor, Masahide Kajimoto, and Arata Isozaki to launch Lucerne Festival Ark Nova, a pioneering social project in the form of a mobile performance venue that became the world’s first-ever inflatable concert hall. In September 2025, Ark Nova — one of the Festival’s most successful international ventures — at last travels to Europe for the first time to be installed and used as a performance space during the Summer Festival in Lucerne.

With a self-sufficiency rate of more than 90%, Lucerne Festival has been able to finance itself under Haefliger’s leadership primarily through concert revenues, sponsorships, and private patronage. In the spring of 2021, he announced a new structural framework for Lucerne Festival: since then, the Festival’s programming has been organized into three categories — «Symphony», «Contemporary», and «Music for Future». Haefliger has launched three additional new short-format festivals over the past few years: Lucerne Festival Forward, which focuses on contemporary music in November; a Spring Festival featuring the Lucerne Festival Orchestra; and Piano Fest, which takes place in May and is curated by the pianist Igor Levit.

Haefliger serves on the boards of several international organizations. In 2000, the World Economic Forum named him a «Global Leader of Tomorrow». He received the European Cultural Innovation Prize in 2003 and the Tourism Award from Lucerne’s Tourism Forum in 2007. In 2014, he was honored with the Central Switzerland Culture Prize. He has also been granted the Badge of Honor of the City of Lucerne and the «Swiss Society of New York Award». On 12 June 2025, Haefliger will be presented with the International Citation of Merit Award by the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) in recognition of his many years of pioneering leadership.

Michael Haefliger is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Davos Festival, the UBS Cultural Foundation, and the Pierre Boulez Foundation, and since 2020, of the Swiss Youth Music Competition. He additionally served on the boards of the World Arts Forum from 2012 to 2018 and of Avenir Suisse from 2008 to 2020. He chairs the jury of the UBS Young Artist Award and, as of early 2024, is a board member of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. Michael Haefliger is an alumnus of the Juilliard School of Music, the University of St. Gallen, and Harvard Business School.

April 2025