GE Energy Hydro has developed a new procedure for the CFD analysis of the unsteady rotor-stator interaction between the wicket gates and runner blades of Francis turbines. The results from the CFD calculations have been successfully validated by means of high quality unsteady pressure measurements on a model turbine performed at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Due to the efficiency of the procedure and the available computational capacities, unsteady rotor-stator analyses are now routinely employed in the design of Francis runners.