Uyeasound 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.
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"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
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Founded in 1961 by a group of friends reluctant to end their New Year celebrations, this community fire festival lights up Shetland's east Mainland each February with a torchlit galley procession and squads of guizers in hand-crafted Viking costumes."
Nesting and Girlsta Up Helly Aa
"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
Villagly Award · Hardest to Reach"Three days in a Black Isle village near Inverness where the sessions run late and the Moray Firth catches the September light outside, a small Highland folk festival doing exactly what it promised."
Ardersier Folk Festival
"On a remote Hebridean island of more deer than people, a village hall and marquee fill with trad sessions, ceilidhs, step dancing and a samba procession."
Jura Music Festival
"Competitors from across the world converge on the Cairngorm village of Carrbridge to contest the Golden Spurtle trophy each October, cooking traditional porridge and open specialty oat dishes to a panel of judges in the village hall while the birch woods outside are turning the first rust of autumn."
World Porridge Making Championship
✦ Weird and Wonderful