Petrenko was born in Omsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, to a violinist father and musicologist mother.

At age 18, he and his family emigrated to Austria, soon after the Soviet borders were opened, where his father played in the Symphony Orchestra Vorarlberg.

His other conducting teachers and mentors have included Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Downes, Péter Eötvös, Ferdinand Leitner, Roberto Carnevale and Semyon Bychkov.

From 1999 to 2002, he was Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) of the Südthüringisches Staatstheater, Das Meininger Theater (Meiningen, Germany), where his work included conducting the four stage works of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (Ring Cycle) in 2001 on four consecutive days,[4] his first professional conducting engagement with the operas of Wagner.

[8][10] In October 2016, the Berlin Philharmonic formally announced that Petrenko was to officially start his tenure as the orchestra's chief conductor on 19 August 2019.