Since its establishment, the Academy has always organised summer concert activities in close contact with the master classes (which until 2014 were followed by concert seasons called Settimana Musicale Senese and Estate Musicale Chigiana).
As of 2015, the ‘Chigiana International Festival and Summer Academy’ has completely redesigned the structure and typology of the Academy's music and entertainment offer, bringing together the entire concert season, divided into thematic areas, under a single, renewed programme.
Chigiana International Festival and Summer Academy qualifies as the first festival in Italy with a high international profile that unites and connects production, higher education and music dissemination in an organic and coordinated manner.
Opening up to intercultural dialogue and the multiple artistic languages of contemporaneity, the Festival constitutes a unique opportunity for the young musicians and numerous Chigiani students involved, from all over the world, to experience direct contact with the great protagonists of the international concert scene. To complement and complete the teaching activities, in fact, the protagonists of some of the concerts are the most talented students who accompany the Maestri in a logic of continuity between old and new generations that has always distinguished the Accademia Chigiana.
Some concerts of the Festival are preceded by meetings and conversations with the audience, the series Chigiana Lounge.