Messiah booking problems
11 April 2026
Having worked closely with the Royal Albert Hall over many months to create a largely successful online booking system for last year’s Messiah from Scratch, we have been dismayed by the problems experienced this year by many of our regular singers.
As far as we were concerned it was simply repeat business: the seating plan we have used for the past 50 years, and which is unchanged from 2025, was sent to the Hall for their Box Office staff to transfer into their own booking system. This transfer is a time-consuming manual process and we regret that mistakes were made in the voice allocation of which we were unaware. Altos who were mistakenly able to buy seats in the bass section on the Stage have all been contacted by the Hall and offered alto seats elsewhere; the Hall has accepted full responsibility and apologised for the error.
Apart from that specific mistake, the Hall’s booking system proved far trickier to navigate than in 2025. The RAH system is hugely intricate, and Messiah from Scratch adds a further layer of complexity because of the different voice parts. Small modifications to the booking system as a whole are being made all the time, and it is one of these which has had entirely unforeseen consequences for our event. This meant that our carefully worded instructions were no longer totally correct, although they were tested by us in advance of the launch.
Some people, in their panic to get tickets, have bought blocks of seats in the wrong voice area. Please do your best to resell or swap these, using either the RAH-recommended Twickets site for resale and purchase, or arrange to swap with other singers by posting details on our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/110013771544. Please do not try to sing alto from among the sopranos, or tenor from among the altos – it will not be a good experience for anyone! If you are not sure where the boundaries are between the voice parts, the diagram on page 4 of this leaflet will help you: https://www.trbc.co.uk/wp2/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Booking-leaflet-new-date.pdf (enlarge it to see more clearly where the voice parts begin and end).
As and when more tickets become available, we will make announcements via the Facebook Group. And when we and the RAH have managed to unpick what went wrong with this year’s booking process, we will email everyone on our mailing list to explain.
Mercifully, many people have been able to book the seats they wanted, but if you are among those who have had problems, please accept our sincere apologies.
