With her elegant, expressive body language, natural stage presence, and infectious musicality, Eva Ollikainen is one of the leading conductors of our time. This former student of Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula, at the Sibelius Academy, won the Jorma Panula Conducting Competition at the age of twenty-one, and since 2020, having previously served as Chief Conductor of the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. During the 2025 / 26 season she will make her début with the Münchner Philharmoniker, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Nederlands Philharmonisch, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra, at the NHK Music Festival, among others. She will also return to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, at the BBC Proms, and to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre national de Belgique, and SWR Symphonieorchester. In March, she will lead the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on a European tour. In recent seasons she has made appearances with the Orchestre national de France, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Wiener Symphoniker, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the operatic world, she has conducted at Staatsoper Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, Den Kongelige Opera, Copenhagen, Kungliga Operan, Stockholm, Finnish National Opera, and GöteborgsOperan. She is well known as a champion of contemporary music, notably the work of the Icelandic composer Anna þorvaldsdóttir, with whom she has a close artistic partnership. In 2023, she and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra released a recording of the composer’s ARCHORA and AION to critical acclaim; the album was named among the Best Classical Music Albums of 2023 by The New York Times and the 10 Best Classical Albums of the Year by The Boston Globe. She had given the world première of ARCHORA during her BBC Proms début in 2022 with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, deemed one of the Classical Highlights of 2022 by The Guardian. The support of young musicians being close to her heart, she teaches regularly at the Sibelius Academy and leads master-classes at the Fiskars Summer Festival, in Raseborg, Finland, Nordisk Dirigentforum, in Norway, and institutions such as the Peabody Institute, in Baltimore, and Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium, in Copenhagen. Eva Ollikainen founded the Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s Conducting Academy in 2021.