"A 36th-year coastal festival that crowns the weekend with an Aqua Ceilidh in the open-air pool and a World Paper'n'Comb Championship alongside top trad acts."
Stonehaven Folk Festival
"Strongmen, dancers and massed pipe bands gather at the Mackie Academy fields in this characterful Aberdeenshire harbour town."
Stonehaven Highland Games
"Heavy events, highland dancing and pipe bands on Aboyne Green in a long-running Deeside gathering."
Aboyne Highland Games
"Scotland's largest two-day agricultural show, established in 1864, draws around 24,000 visitors to The Haughs in Turriff for over 1,554 competition classes spanning livestock, working dogs and vintage vehicles."
Turriff Show
"Classic Deeside games of caber, hammer and dancing in a village beside Balmoral."
Ballater Highland Games
"The Royal Deeside market town of Banchory hosts its agricultural show each August at the gateway to the Cairngorms, where Aberdeenshire beef and Highland cattle are judged against a backdrop of the Forest of Birse and the River Dee shining in the valley below."
Banchory Show
"The March of the Lonach Highlanders, kilted men with pikes walking the glen, precedes a day of games at Strathdon."
Lonach Highland Gathering
"One of Scotland's most distinctive gatherings, the Lonach sees kilted clansmen march twelve miles carrying pikes before the Highland Games begin at Bellabeg in the upper Don valley."
Lonach Highland and Friendly Society Gathering
"The most famous of the Highland games, with tossing the caber, hill races and massed pipe bands, often attended by royalty."
Braemar Gathering
"Four days of Aberdeenshire artisan food producers, local folk musicians and community spirit in a Royal Deeside village, where the September apple harvest season and the warmth of a rural Scottish gathering make for an unusually nourishing weekend."
Tarland Food and Music Festival
"The Royal Deeside village that sits at the foot of the hills above Balmoral holds its Christmas market each December in a setting in the Cairngorms National Park that very few other Christmas markets anywhere in Britain can match for sheer backdrop."
Ballater Christmas Market
"At Hogmanay locals swing flaming wire cages of fire over their heads down the High Street to burn away the old year."
Stonehaven Fireball Ceremony
"Singarounds, seaside shanties and storytelling fill this fishing village's Salmon Bothy for the 16th gathering of song, tune and tradition."
HAAL Festival
"This quiet Aberdeenshire village holds its own Highland games on the first Saturday of June, a deeply local event where the spectators know the athletes and the afternoon ends with community socialising that no travel guide has yet fully described."
Cornhill Highland Games
"A flotilla of heritage boats drops anchor in the seventeenth-century harbour for a weekend of music, dance, Scottish food and age-old craft demonstrations."
Scottish Traditional Boat Festival
"The Aberdeenshire market town of Oldmeldrum hosts its Highland games on the longest days of the year, when the evening light in the northeast lasts until midnight and the caber tosses and pipe bands feel like they belong to the oldest possible version of a Scottish summer."
Oldmeldrum Highland Games
"Known locally as the Sunshine Sports, this Aberdeenshire gathering first held in 1930 combines traditional heavy events with athletic competitions in the heart of a rural market town."
Oldmeldrum Sports and Highland Games
"The Grampian Transport Museum at Alford hosts this outdoor celebration of north-east Scotland's food and drink producers each June, a showcase of Aberdeenshire's extraordinary larder of beef, fish, game and artisan produce set in the Howe of Alford with the Grampian hills rising on every side."
Best of Grampian
"Known as the friendliest games in the area, set among the trees in the glorious grounds of Drumtochty Castle just outside Auchenblae."
Drumtochty Highland Games