Nesting and Girlsta Up Helly Aa

"A world-renowned week celebrating Britain's most northerly native sheep and the Shetland textile tradition, with knitting demonstrations, croft visits, a new hat pattern each year and events spread across the islands for 2026's Together Through Makkin theme."

Shetland Wool Week

"Said to be the most prestigious traditional accordion and fiddle event in Scotland, it builds to a world famous Grand Dance with six hours of live music from eleven dance bands."

Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Festival

"Shetland's oldest fire festival opens the islands' Viking season each January with 200 to 300 torch-bearing guizers escorting a burning longship galley through the streets of Shetland's former capital to the harbour at Port Arthur."

Scalloway Fire Festival

"Up to a thousand torch-bearing guizers in Viking dress march through the dark and set a full-size longship galley ablaze."

Up Helly Aa

"Shetland's second-oldest fire festival, held since 1911 on Britain's most northerly island, draws over 200 guizers through the dark February night before a Viking galley is set ablaze on the shore at Uyeasound."

Uyeasound Up Helly Aa

"Lauder's Common Riding is one of the most intimate of the Borders festivals, with a mounted Cornet leading riders along the ancient marches of this small market town on the edge of the Lammermuir Hills."

Lauder Common Riding

"Coldstream's civic week climaxes with the Coldstreamer leading a mounted rideout to Flodden Field, honouring the Borderers who fell in the 1513 battle in one of the most moving riding ceremonies in Scotland."

Coldstream Civic Week

"A man encased head to toe in sticky burrs walks the town for nine hours, a fertility custom of unknown but ancient origin."

Burryman's Parade

"One of Scotland's oldest music festivals brings Gaelic nights, ceilidhs, pipe bands and distillery tours to a remote Kintyre town at the road's very end."

Mull of Kintyre Music Festival

"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

"Four days of traditional music on an Hebridean island reachable only by ferry, workshops, open sessions, ceilidhs in the island hall, and the Atlantic on all four sides."

Ceol Cholasa: Colonsay Folk Festival