1926 in British music

This is a summary of 1926 in music in the United Kingdom.

Events

 * c. May – Socialist composer Rutland Boughton stages a performance of his Nativity opera Bethlehem (1915) at Church House, Westminster, in a staging explicitly referencing the 1926 United Kingdom general strike.
 * 6 May – In the midst of the General Strike, a concert of Leos Janácek's work is held at the Wigmore Hall, attended by the composer himself.
 * 20 October – Ethel Smyth's opera Entente Cordiale receives its first public stage performance in Bristol, having been premièred by students at the Royal College of Music the previous year.
 * November – Gertrude Lawrence becomes the first British performer to star in a US musical on Broadway, starring in Oh, Kay!.
 * 8 December – The premiere of Dame Ethel Smyth's Sonata in A minor for cello and piano is held in London, nearly 40 years after the work was composed.
 * 14 December – The mother of teenage composer Benjamin Britten brings his work to the attention of Charles Macpherson.
 * 17 December – Composer John Ireland marries Dorothy Phillips, thirty years his junior, at Chelsea Register Office.
 * 26 December – Granville Bantock's incidental music for Macbeth is used for the first time, in a production at the Prince Theatre, London, starring Sybil Thorndike.
 * date unknown
 * Operatic baritone Leslie Rands marries his D'Oyly Carte co-star Marjorie Eyre.
 * Eugène Goossens, fils, joins the British National Opera Company as a conductor.
 * Sir Walford Davies resigns his professorship at University College, Aberystwyth.
 * The Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art is founded by Walter Johnstone Douglas and Amherst Webber in London.
 * Organist and composer Herbert Brewer receives a knighthood.

Popular music

 * Eric Coates – "By The Tamarisk"

Classical music: new works

 * Arnold Bax – Symphony No. 2 in E minor and C major
 * Rutland Boughton – The Queen of Cornwall, overture
 * John Ireland – Three Songs, 1926
 * Ralph Vaughan Williams
 * On Christmas Night (ballet)
 * Piano Concerto in C (movements 1 and 2)
 * Six Studies in English Folk Song
 * Gerald Tyrwhitt – The Triumph of Neptune (ballet)
 * Peter Warlock – Capriol Suite

Opera

 * Ernest Bryson – The Leper’s Flute, with libretto by Ian Colvin

Musical theatre

 * May – Yvonne by Percy Greenbank, Jean Gilbert and Vernon Dukelsky, opens at Daly's Theatre, London.

Births

 * 3 January – Sir George Martin, record producer (died 2016)
 * 21 January – Brian Brockless, organist, composer, and conductor (died 1995)
 * 11 February – Alexander Gibson, conductor and founder of the Scottish Opera (died 1995)
 * 20 February – Gillian Lynne, choreographer (died 2018)
 * 14 March – Lita Roza, singer (died 2006)
 * 31 May — Duncan Campbell, trumpeter (died 2013)
 * 2 July – Morag Beaton, operatic soprano (died 2010)
 * 18 July – Bryan Johnson, singer (died 1995)
 * 17 August – George Melly, jazz singer (died 2007)
 * 17 November – Robert Earl, singer
 * 30 December – Stan Tracey, jazz pianist and composer (died 2013)

Deaths

 * 8 June – John Hornsey Casson, hymn-tune composer, 82
 * 12 July – Charles Wood, composer, 60
 * 2 November – John Le Hay, Irish-born musical comedy performer, 72
 * 4 November – Robert Newman, co-founder of the Proms, 68