Two Just Stop Oil supporters disrupted the First Night of the Proms by storming the stage at the Royal Albert Hall.
Security escorted the pair away moments after they ran on, as members of the audience booed and shouted for them to be removed.
Afterwards the group – which is calling on the Government to not not grant any further oil licences – said the pair’s actions were prompted by the ”BBC’s underwhelming coverage of the climate emergency”.
It said: ”In recent weeks, the BBC has been accused of ‘false balance’ as well as uncritically regurgitating government and oil company propaganda.”
A BBC spokesman said in response to the incident: “There was no disruption to the concert or the broadcast during the few seconds the protesters were on stage.”
The group revealed the pair who disrupted the event were, Kate Logan, a 38-year-old mum of two from London and Pia Bastide, a 29-year-old community worker from London.
Ms Logan said: “Many years ago, I sang with a youth choir at the Albert Hall, never imagining I would one day disrupt a performance here to draw attention to the planetary crisis we find ourselves in. But that’s what this has come to — our leaders and the press have failed us for decades and now it’s up to ordinary people to demand the changes we need.”
Ms Bastide added: “I’m sorry to harp on about it, but business as usual isn’t working anymore. We can no longer ignore this crisis when extreme temperatures are scorching Europe right now. Last week, the Secretary General of the United Nations said that the climate crisis is ‘out of control’. I refuse to accept that my future is being sold away, one new oil licence at a time, and do nothing.”
In response to the incident, culture secretary Lucy Frazer tweeted: “Eco zealots shouldn’t disrupt sports events, weddings or the Proms.
“My message is this: Leave people to enjoy the events they love, and stop damaging your own cause.”
The disruption could be heard on BBC Radio 3’s live broadcast of the concert.
Broadcaster Petroc Trelawny remarked the protest felt like an “inevitability” and had sparked a “lively response” from the crowd of prom-goers.
A commotion could be heard in the background as the demonstrators rushed on stage, with Trelawny saying: “Ah now. We now seem to have a protest on the stage. You can hear boos.
“Two or three people have just run on carrying placards but they’re being quickly escorted off by the staff here.”
Fellow presenter Georgia Mann remarked: “Not of many of them Petroc. Looks like potentially only about three.”
Trelawny added: “It feels like an inevitability that that’s an event that we may see, we have seen tonight – let’s hope we don’t see again later on in the Proms season.
“Well it’s caused a bit of lively response, hasn’t it?”
Earlier in the programme before the protest, Mann remarked how close members of the audience were to the performers.
“Somehow it surprises me every summer when we sit here from this vantage point just how close the prommers are to the artists – I’ve said before – touching distance,” she said.
Six thousand people were gathered in the arena for the sell-out event.
The group is calling on the government to stops licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects.
In a bid to force the government to change its policies, the group has tried to disrupt numerous high-profile events such as Wimbledon and the World Snooker Championships.
The activists has also held several slow marches in London which have caused traffic chaos – prompting angry members of the public who were delayed as a result – to rip up protester’s banners and dump them by the side of roads.
Last week Just Stop Oil vowed to carry on disrupting major sporting events such as Wimbledon until fossil fuel licenses stop being granted.
A spokesman for the group James Skeet said it would continue to hold protests until the Government makes a “meaningful statement” to halt any new licenses or consent for fossil fuel exploration in the UK”.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves criticised the group on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday: “I have got no time for Just Stop Oil”.
Ms Reeves said she thought it was “pathetic and quite tedious” to disrupt events, calling their processes “counterproductive” and “rude”.
“People paid to go to Wimbledon, it may be the one time in their life that they get to Wimbledon, they don’t want to be disrupted by a load of protesters.”