The two Royal Ballets at Covent Garden and Birmingham have announced their end-of-season farewells and news for next season's dancers.

The Royal Ballet's big-name departures at the end of this season have already been big news - Sergei Polunin's sudden departure in the spring to go freelance and Tamara Rojo's to take up directorship of the English National Ballet this autumn (Rojo pictured right as Juliet, by Dee Conway), though she is expected to return as a guest performer. Also leaving is the popular First Soloist José Martin, while David Makhateli and Francesca Filpi finished earlier during the year.

Promotions to the second rank of First Soloist come to Alexander Campbell and Ryoichi Hirano. Also rising are new Soloists Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Claire Calvert, James Hay, Dawid Trzensimiech and Valentino Zucchetti, and Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Fumi Kaneko and Yasmine Naghdi are elevated to First Artist.

New Royal Ballet recruits include three Royal Ballet School graduates, Tierney Heap, Mayara Magri and Donald Thom, and Nicol Edmonds from the Finnish National Ballet.

Birmingham Royal Ballet's brightest male star for years, Robert Parker (pictured left by Bill Cooper), finally hangs up his white tights, and the company welcomes back a ballerina who had left Birmingham for Barcelona, in its end-of-season roll changes.

Parker's departure to head Elmhurst School for Dance as artistic director from next term (he succeeds BRB's former assistant director Desmond Kelly) ensures that continuity is likely between the company and the school, which moved from Surrey to Birmingham in order potentially to fulfil BRB's need for a top-rank feeder school. Gaylene Cummerfield (pictured below by Richard Battye) is the other top-ranking leaver, ending her 15-year dancing career to become a full-time mother - her husband is another BRB principal, Matthew Lawrence.

Jenna Roberts is promoted from First Soloist to Principal, the top-ranking of 15 promotions throughout BRB. Rising to First Soloist from Soloist ranks are Angela Paul, Laetitia Lo Sardo, Tzu-Chao Chou and Mathias Dingman.

Momoko Hirata returns to Birmingham Royal Ballet and resume her First Soloist contract following 18 months dancing with Angel Corella’s company in Spain.

Arancha Baselga, Laura Purkiss, James Barton, Jonathan Caguioa and Tom Rogers are promoted to Soloist from First Artist. 

Laura-Jane Gibson, Yvette Knight, Delia Mathews, Callie Roberts, William Bracewell and Oliver Till are promoted to First Artist from Artist.

New recruits from British ballet schools are Royal Ballet School graduate Lachlan Monaghan from Australia and English National Ballet School graduate Miki Mizutani from Japan. Also joining are a soloist from the State Ballet of Georgia, Ana Albutashvili, and Canadian Alys Shee, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre's junior company ABT II. All join at the entry rank of Artist.

• Tamara Rojo gives her final scheduled Royal Ballet performances in Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, which is at the Royal Opera House on Saturday (14), 16, 17 and 20 July
• Birmingham Royal Ballet season has closed - see its website for autumn performances