Scotland is awash with so many festivals that choosing the ones you want to visit can be a mind-boggling experience. Whether you want good music, a sociable atmosphere or a great place to take your kids, our Guide To Scotland’s Festivals makes picking which festivals you want to visit a little less intimidating. 

It’s available online and in print from our distributors and offers you a glimpse into the vibrant world of Scottish festivals, from spoken word to Scottish indie. Here’s a collection of some of the best fests happening across the country, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg – check out the mag for the full scoop. 

Orkney Folk Festival

The festival celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2023, and its first under Craig Corse’s artistic direction. 

Alongside regular favourites and scores of Orkney-based musicians and singers, the lineup features acts from across the UK, Scandinavia and North America. Scottish headliners include the funk-trad-electronic fusion of Elephant Sessions, foot-stomping favourites Breabach and soulful Kinnaris Quintet. From North America, there will be appearances by Vermont cellist Eric Wright and Cape Breton fiddler Mairi Rankin, lyrical Canadian singer-songwriter Mo Kenney, and a UK exclusive performance from Texan jazz and swing group Hot Club of Cowtown. 

Based in Stromness, the festival also takes events to Birsay, Finstown, Harray, Kirkwall, Orphir, Sanday, Sandwick, St Andrews, St Margaret’s Hope and Stenness. (Ailsa Sheldon)

Various venues, Orkney, 25–28 May, orkneyfolkfestival.com

Hidden Door Festival

‘Environments’ is the theme of this year’s Hidden Door music, visual arts and cultural festival in Edinburgh, with musicians, dancers, artists, poets and spoken word performers exploring issues which relate to climate change, as well as the spaces we create or inhabit. The festival prides itself on providing a platform for new and emerging Scottish creative talent, transforming disused spaces around Edinburgh to present an interdisciplinary showcase of creative art forms. In 2023, Hidden Door will take over the maze-like former Scottish Widows HQ, a six-acre site near the Royal Commonwealth Pool. Promising to be the most ‘immersive and atmospheric’ event that Hidden Door has organised to date, expect to experience performance, art, music and movement in a unique environment. (Rachel Ashenden)

The Complex (former Scottish Widows HQ), 15 Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh, 31 May–4 June, hiddendoorarts.org

Riverside Festival

Scotland’s premier electronic music festival, Glasgow’s Riverside Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2023. It takes place next to the striking Riverside Museum building on the banks of the Clyde and always pulls in heavy hitters from the international electronic music scene while also shining a light on the freshest Scottish talent, along with some underground heroes. 

Already announced for 2023 are Newcastle star Patrick Topping, who brings his big-room house mixes to get the audience moving on Saturday 3 June, while Australia’s DJ Mall Grab’s omnivorous taste will no doubt delight. On Sunday, hometown heroes and co-curators of the festival, Slam, will go back to back with Frazi.er. They’ll be joined on the lineup by Hector Oaks, the Spanish vinyl aficionado, and the hard-hitting techno of Paula Temple. (Sean Greenhorn)

3 & 4 June, Riverside Museum, Glasgow, riversidefestivalglasgow.com

Wildhood

Lots of festivals have a kids-zone. Wildhood, which takes place over a weekend in the grounds of 17th-century Tullibole Castle is all kids-zone. In other words, it’s a festival wholly designed around and for children aged 12 and under. There’s plenty that you’d expect at a grown-up festival, from camping to food stalls to music and chances to try things out, but it’s all oriented to younger ones from toddlers to pre-teens. Scheduled over three days and two nights, it makes the most of its setting, with the backdrop of a fairytale castle and plenty of space to explore, including bushcraft and eco explorations in the ancient woodland, room for campfires, cooking zones and play areas in the extensive camping space. The central festival zone is filled with arts and craft, music and mythology, yoga and dance, spellbinding stories and magical creatures. (Donald Reid)

Tullibole Castle, Crook of Devon, Kinross, 2–4 June, wildhoodfestival.com

East Neuk Festival

Held across the pretty East Fife coast each summer, this festival’s venues often surprise and have included churches, caves, stately homes and an ex-nuclear bunker. This year there will be concerts in Crail, Kilrenny, Anstruther and Elie, underpinned by a belief in the transformative potential of live music. Co-founder and director Svend McEwan-Brown says: ‘Friendships and special collaborations are the building blocks for the ENF 2023 programme, and as ever, we offer concerts that you will hear nowhere else.’ This year, there’s a special residence by the award-winning Belcea Quartet, returning with a ‘dream team’ of musicians to play solo, duo, quartet and sextet arrangements, including violinist Vilde Frang, pianist Bertrand Chamayou, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and violist Diyang Mei. 

Various venues, East Fife, 29 June–2 July, eastneukfestival.com

Tall ships race 

A biennial event first organised in the late 1950s, the Tall Ships Race allows some of the most impressive traditional sailing ships in Europe to gather together as an ocean-going fleet, creating memorable adventures for their crews and dramatic sights for spectators at destination and departure ports. The tall ships are primarily sail-training vessels, giving youngsters between 15 and 25 an experience of working together as a crew in testing conditions but also showing off the full glory of the square-rigged barques, brigs and schooners that make up the assembled fleet. This year’s event sees the race criss-crossing the North Sea from Holland to Hartlepool in the north of England, then across to Fredrikstad in Norway. From there, the ships head north-west, bound for Shetland, aiming to arrive on or soon after 26 July. As with previous Tall Ships Race visits to Lerwick in 1999 and 2011, the harbourside and town will be a buzz of activity and sights with various events and entertainment organised shoreside, as well as opportunities to see some of the craft up close. Around 50 ships and hundreds of trainees and crews from Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Latvia, Netherlands and the UK are expected, among them Shetland’s own, much-treasured sail-training ship The Swan, a restored, gaff-rigged 1900 Fifie herring drifter. The climax of the visit is a parade of sail scheduled for Saturday 29th July, after which the tall ships will disappear over the horizon bound for Kristiansand at the mouth of the Baltic Sea. (Donald Reid)

Lerwick Harbour, Shetland, 26–29 July, tallshipslerwick.com

Lammermuir Festival

The Lammermuir Festival brings the finest classical music to East Lothian each September. Promising ‘beautiful music in beautiful places’, historic churches in particular are used as atmospheric venues, including St Mary’s in Haddington which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its rebuild. 

The programme features performances by the festival’s patron, pianist Steven Osborne, as well as concerts by Roderick Williams, Maxwell String Quartet, Scottish Opera, Dunedin Consort and the all-star Kaleidoscope Chamber Cooperative. There’s a festival debut by soprano Nardus Williams and the 400th anniversary of the death of composer William Byrd is marked by Secret Byrd, a new ‘concert-theatre’ immersive performance by acclaimed vocal group Gesualdo 6 and instrumentalists Fretwork. (Ailsa Sheldon)

Various venues, East Lothian, 7–18 September, lammermuirfestival.co.uk

Otherlands Music & Arts Festival 

A relative newcomer to the Scottish festival landscape, Otherlands takes place at Scone Palace in Perthshire. Its inaugural edition in 2022 was advertised as ‘more than a music festival’ and boasted art installations, talks on everything from mental health to sexuality, comedy acts and a beginners DJ workshop. Otherlands is presented by established promoters FLY (whose FLY Open Air festival has been a fixture in the Scottish calendar for years) and leans towards the electronic side of the musical spectrum. Scone Palace is a category-A listed historic building, lending the festival a picturesque and distinctive backdrop.  

The acts for 2023 include a live set from Overmono, Skin On Skin, Hudson Mohawke, Haai, Floorplan, Bemz, Nimmo and Glitch 41 with more to be announced. In 2022, the festival had a lineup of top-tier electronic music talent such as Bicep, Jamie XX, Tom Misch and Honey Dijon. Among six stages in total in 2022, the Sonare Stage hosted an inclusive club night born out of the desire to create safer spaces for women and LGBTQ+ people, while the BBC Introducing stage featured the best of new talent. The event also featured a ‘Wellness Sanctuary’ that allowed festival goers the chance to take a dip in wood-fired hot tubs, take a hot shower, take a yoga lesson or even get a massage. A street-food market on site promises cuisines from burgers to Sri Lankan dishes until 3am. (Sean Greenhorn)

Scone Palace, Perth, 11–13 August, otherlandsfestival.com

Find out more about our Guide To Scotland’s Festivals.