Pappano is in demand as an opera conductor at the highest international level, including with the Metropolitan Opera New York, the State Operas of Vienna and Berlin, the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Teatro alla Scala, and has appeared as a guest conductor with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Bavarian Radio, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago and Boston Symphonies, the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras. He maintains a particularly strong relationship with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season and beyond include return visits to the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, and guest appearances with the Swedish Radio Symphony and the Orchestra f the Royal Danish Opera, and he continues the acclaimed new Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera with a new production of Siegfried. In his second season as Chief Conductor of the London Symphony, Pappano takes the orchestra on wide-ranging tours to major European capitals and festivals, and a residency in Hanoi, Vietnam, as well as concerts at London’s Barbican Centre with concertante performances of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and symphonic repertoire from Bernstein, Britten and Copland, to Macmillan, Musgrave, Mahler, and further recordings of Vaughan Williams and Elgar for LSO Live.