Gustavo Dudamel will become music director of the New York Philharmonic for the 2026-27 season, ending a heralded tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that began in 2009. The 42-year-old Venezuelan conductor agreed to a five-year contract as New York’s artistic and music director, the orchestra announced on Tuesday. Dudamel will become the first Latino to head the orchestra since its founding in 1842. He will succeed Jaap van Zweden , also music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, who said in September 2021 that he would leave the New York Philharmonic after the 2023-24 season, a six-season tenure as music director that will be the shortest since Pierre Boulez succeeded Leonard Bernstein and led the orchestra from 1971-77. “What the orchestra told us very, very clearly was that the person that they wanted, their dream candidate, was Gustavo,” New York Philharmonic CEO Deborah Borda said. “When you’re trying to recruit the most sought-after conductor in the world, you don’t run a sort of classic search.” Dudamel – who will hold the title of music director designate in 2025-26 – will also remain music director of the Paris Opera, a role he’s held since 2021, and of Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, a position he took in 1999 that gained him international recognition. Dudamel, in a statement, cited the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca’s quote: “Every step we take on earth brings us to a new world.” I hadn’t seen a conductor like this since Bernstein Deborah Borda, New York Philharmonic CEO, on her hiring of Gustavo Dudamel as Los Angeles Philharmonic music director in 2009 “I gaze with joy and excitement at the world that lies before me in New York City, and with pride and love at the world I have shared – and will continue to share – with my dear Angelenos over the next three seasons and beyond,” Dudamel said. “All of us are united in our belief that culture creates a better world, and in our dream that music is a fundamental right.” Dudamel is among the few conductors who in recent years have gained mainstream attention. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in November 2007 and has conducted the orchestra 26 times. He is scheduled to lead three performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony from May 19-21. “[His] infectious joy and deep musicality and humanism connects with audiences,” Borda said of Dudamel. Bordawas the Los Angeles orchestra’s CEO when she hired Dudamel as music director for the 2009-10 season. “I remember the first day we tried to book him – he didn’t even have a manager. And look at how he’s progressed since then,” Borda said. “I hadn’t seen a conductor like this since Bernstein.”