Is Wales About to Prove It Really Is the Land of Song?
WALES has been called the Land of Song for generations.
It is a description wrapped up in male voice choirs, chapel singing, eisteddfodau, rugby crowds and those moments when thousands of Welsh voices somehow seem to find the same note without anyone needing to tell them what to do.
But in May 2027, Wales is preparing to take the description rather more literally.
More than 20,000 singers from Wales, across the UK and around the world are expected to come together beneath the closed roof of Cardiff’s Principality Stadium for Côr World Choir on Sunday, 9 May — creating what organisers describe as the largest choir ever assembled in Wales.
And if 20,000 voices singing together doesn’t qualify Wales as the Land of Song, it is difficult to imagine what would.
Tickets go on general sale at 10am on Friday, 25 September, putting this week’s announcement firmly on the radar for anyone who wants to witness what could become one of the great Welsh musical occasions of recent years. Selected presales begin from Wednesday 23 September.
This will not simply be 20,000 people singing a few traditional Welsh favourites.
The programme promises to move from Calon Lân and Yma o Hyd to Sir Karl Jenkins’ Adiemus, Carl Orff’s O Fortuna and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. There will even be a massed-choir tribute to one of Wales’ most distinctive pop voices with Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Add the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, plus special guests still to be revealed, and the scale begins to become apparent.
Just imagine Yma o Hyd sung by 20,000 voices inside a closed Principality Stadium.
That alone might be worth the admission price.
But there is another reason why Côr World Choir matters.
Wales has been here before.
Back in 1992, long before the present Principality Stadium existed, the old Cardiff Arms Park hosted a remarkable World Choir concert bringing together around 10,000 singers.
Among those appearing with them was a certain Tom Jones.
A year later they did it again, this time with another of Cardiff’s greatest musical exports, Shirley Bassey, among the performers.
Those concerts became part of Welsh musical folklore.
More than three decades later, the idea is coming home — except this time the choir could be twice the size.
There is a family connection too. The original World Choir was created by the late David Lewis OBE. His son Ben Lewis, now CEO of Young Voices and Côr World Choir, is behind the return, describing the original events as something that “could only have been born in Wales”.
It is a lovely piece of continuity.
A Welsh idea conceived in the early 1990s, passed to another generation and now returning to Cardiff on an even larger scale.
Côr World Choir will form part of the new Land of Song Festival – Gŵyl Gwlad y Gân, running in Cardiff during 6–9 May 2027 and designed around Wales’s relationship with singing, music and community.
And the weekend is shaping up to be quite something.
On Saturday, 8 May, internationally renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli will give his first-ever headline concert in Wales at the Principality Stadium, accompanied by the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera and massed voices.
Twenty-four hours later, the emphasis switches from watching one of the world’s great singers to celebrating the extraordinary sound that can be created when ordinary people sing together.
That may actually be the most Welsh part of the whole idea.
Our musical tradition has never belonged solely to stars.
It belongs to the village choir rehearsing on a wet Tuesday evening. To children learning their first Welsh song at school. To the chapel vestry, the eisteddfod stage, the rugby supporter who suddenly discovers an unexpectedly powerful singing voice somewhere around the opening bars of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.
Côr World Choir takes that tradition and blows it up to stadium proportions.
Nor will everyone taking part be Welsh. Community choirs, chamber choirs and choral societies from elsewhere in Britain and around the world have been invited to join the gathering. Organisers say the event is intended to celebrate Welsh music alongside classical, contemporary and international traditions.
Perhaps that is important too.
Being the Land of Song doesn’t have to mean keeping Welsh singing to ourselves.
It can mean inviting the world to come and sing with us.
And there can surely be few better places to do it than the Principality Stadium. Welsh rugby supporters already know the extraordinary effect of a closed roof when tens of thousands begin singing together.
Multiply the choir itself to more than 20,000, put a full symphony orchestra behind it and add tens of thousands more people listening from the stands.
Cardiff could be in for quite a night.
More than 30 years ago, 10,000 voices joined Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey at the old Arms Park.
In May 2027, a new generation will attempt something even bigger.
The Land of Song is getting ready to sing again.
Did Ewe Know?
The Principality Stadium’s retractable roof can be opened or closed in around 20 minutes. For Côr World Choir it is due to be closed — turning one of Wales’ biggest sporting arenas into what could feel like one enormous concert hall for 20,000 voices.