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With its unique set of traditions, flamboyantly dressed audience and rumbunctious atmosphere, the Last Night of the Proms is one of the UK’s great musical happenings. But what makes it such a special occasion? And who helped shape it? We explain all below, and recall some highlights from years gone by.

Let’s start with the obvious: it wouldn’t be a Prom without music. Each year the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Symphony Orchestra provides the beating heart of the evening, pumping out a game of two halves. The first is a more serious affair, usually with a new work commissioned especially for the occasion. In recent years these have included Roxanna Panufnik’s Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light, Mark Simpson’s sparks and Gity Razaz’s Mother. The 2022 Last Night featured a commission from British composer James B. Wilson, whose 1922 takes a bird’s-eye view of 100 years of broadcasting, in the centenary year of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.

But in the second half the momentum shifts, culminating in a now-iconic medley of British singalongs: Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea-Songs (featuring ‘Rule, Britannia!’), Britannia!’, Edward Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, Hubert Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’, the National Anthem and ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

It might feel like this closing sequence is as old as the festival itself, but the pieces – minus ‘Auld Lang Syne’ – were only heard together for the first time in 1954, nearly 60 years after the first Proms season. The ever-popular Malcolm Sargent – or ‘Flash’, as he was affectionately known – helped put together the programme that evening before leading the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ SO charismatically from the podium.

Small tweaks have been made to the formula over the years. Perhaps the most scandalous was when, in 1995, Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s violently dissonant commission Panic was programmed for after the interval (the half of the concert aired on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One). Shocked viewers were greeted by ‘an obsessed-looking saxophonist wandering around bellowing like a bull in a field of cattle’, as The Independent reported. A deluge of complaints swiftly followed.

Every year the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ SO is joined onstage by one or more special guests – big names from both the classical and non-classical worlds. Star soloists have included Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, who gave an electric performance of Ravel’s Tzigane in 2014, and Bryn Terfel, who sang a crop of bass-baritone opera arias in 2008.

Golda Shultz performed to an empty Arena in 2020, her rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ striking a poignant chord in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic; German tenor Jonas Kaufmann so moved his audience in 2015 that somebody launched a pair of knickers at him; and who could forget when, in 2011, Chinese pianist Lang Lang hot-footed it from his Proms in the Park performance to the Royal Albert Hall, just in time to perform Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

In 2012 violinist Nicola Benedetti was joined onstage by Team GB’s Olympic medallists, who gave a rousing rendition of ‘Rule, Britannia!’. But surely the greatest set of Last Night cameos occurred in 2009, when Goldie, Sir David Attenborough, Chi-chi Nwanoku, Rory Bremner and Martha Kearney performed Malcolm Arnold’s A Grand, Grand Overture – a piece that features parts for vacuum cleaner and floor polisher!

This year two huge stars will be gracing the Royal Albert Hall stage: trumpeter Alison Balsom performs Hummel's Trumpet Concerto, while soprano Louise Alder gives renditions of arias or songs by Gounod and Lehár.

Union Jack hats, glitzy gowns and tuxedos: the unofficial dress code for the Last Night is anything but understated. And that’s just for the audience. Ever since mezzo-soprano Sarah Walker wore a dress in 1985 that, on release of a button, extended into a Union flag, Last Night soloists have tried to one-up each other for the most elaborate onstage couture. (Not least Walker herself: four years later she wore a dress that incorporated a quartet of Union flags.)

Sarah Connolly made waves with her nautical get-up in 2009; Jamie Barton proudly wore a gown featuring the colours of the bisexual flag – lavender, pink and blue – in 2019; and Swedish soprano Nina Stemme rode out 2017’s Last Night dressed as a Valkyrie. But few could top Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, who in 2016 sang ‘Rule, Britannia!’ in full Inca attire, complete with a bright feathered headdress and golden breastplate?

Veterans of the Last Night will be familiar with the various quirks and rituals that accompany the music-making. Rows of audience members bobbing along to the sailor’s hornpipe in the Fantasia on British Sea-Songs, for instance. Or the many hundreds of flags, waved enthusiastically throughout. (And not just the Union Jack, which joins with stripes, crosses and emblems from all around the world.)

Whoever is conducting on the night is also expected to make a speech – a tradition established in 1941 by Proms founder-conductor Henry Wood after the festival moved from a bombed-out Queen’s Hall to the Royal Albert Hall. (Wood himself is commemorated each year with a laurel chaplet, placed over his bronze bust by two members of the audience.)

Though Malcolm Sargent was known for his razor-sharp wit on the podium, perhaps the most memorable of all the Last Night addresses came from Sir Andrew Davis in 2000. The Conductor Laureate of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ SO actually sang his speech to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s patter song ‘I am the very model of a modern Major-General’.

The Last Night of the Proms 2025 is broadcast live on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 3 and shown on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two (first half) and ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One (second half) on Saturday 13 September. You can listen on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds and watch on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer until 13 October. Find out more about this year’s programme here.