The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". The orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall. Its current music director is Franz Welser-Möst.

Cleveland, officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in Northeast Ohio along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the U.S. maritime border with Canada and lies approximately 60 miles (97 km) west of Pennsylvania. Cleveland ranks as the most populous city on Lake Erie, the second-most populous city in Ohio, and the 54th-most populous city in the U.S. with a 2020 population of 372,624. The city anchors the Cleveland metropolitan area, the 33rd-largest in the U.S. at 2.18 million residents, as well as the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton combined statistical area, the most populous in Ohio and the 17th-largest in the country with a population of 3.63 million in 2020.