What is it that gives a festival its identity? The acts? Audiences? Or something in the setting and unique atmosphere? Most likely it’s a combination of them all. Compromise one element and you’d fear the magic would be lost. Yet different acts headline each year, and new audiences turn up. Is the location equally interchangeable? A handful of Scottish festivals have, by choice or by circumstance, had to come up with different definitions of ‘home’ in recent years. 

A rotating singular venue has been the tantalising schtick of the Hidden Door festival since it began in 2014. Every year, organisers find a different derelict or disused Edinburgh building to reimagine, with previous locations including Granton Gasworks, Leith Theatre and the Old Royal High School. The spaces made available to them on any given year fully inform the shape that year’s festival can take. Their 2023 site, the former Scottish Widows building, boasted a vast square footage that allowed them to commission artists to create large-scale immersive environments unlike anything they’ve been able to pull off in other locations. 2024’s festival will take place later into autumn, and they’ve also announced an additional ten-year anniversary celebration event on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 May, with an announcement on both venues eagerly anticipated as this guide went to press. 

Probably the most famous itinerant festival in Scotland each year is the Royal National Mòd (October), the annual gathering of Gaelic culture with its extensive and prestigious competitions in music and song, dancing, drama, sport and literature. Having been in Dunoon, Glasgow, Inverness and Perth in recent times, it was held in Paisley last year, and for 2024 it will be making its way back to Oban, the town where the Mòd’s Many festivals are closely identified with long-established home venues. parent group, An Comunn Gàidhealach (The Highland Association), was founded in 1891. In that time, the Mòd has arrived in over 25 towns and cities across Scotland, some more often than others, but blending a sense of anticipation and familiarity with each year’s arrival in a different spot to the previous event. 

A change of venue can also signify the beginning of a new era. A case in point is Edinburgh International Book Festival (August). After appointing new director Jenny Niven in 2023, the festival will be moving all events from Edinburgh College Of Art into the brand new Edinburgh Futures Institute on Lauriston Place. After lying empty for the best part of 20 years, the old Royal Infirmary building has been refurbished to house not only University Of Edinburgh students and staff but also the wider cultural community. Auditoriums and open-planned collaborative spaces will be taken over by the book festival in this exciting new chapter. 

Another book festival taking on some new spaces in 2024 is Paisley Book Festival (April), which will host events in the newly renovated Paisley Town Hall and the new Paisley Central Library. StAnza poetry festival (March) is one of a number of events to successfully blend ‘online’ as an additional venue in recent years alongside their annual infiltration of varied St Andrews locations such as The Byre Theatre, Botanic Gardens, Parliament Hall and Laidlaw Music Centre. While suited better to literary festivals than, say, food and drink or activity-based festivals, the hybrid option (handled effectively) can be much more than an emergency alternative and add an additional dimension to the reach and audience of an event.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh International Festival (August) has also seen new locations come and go over the years. Although it was sad to see the contemporary music strand at Leith Theatre make a departure under Nicola Benedetti’s directorship in 2023, her team opted to invite audiences into their HQ at The Hub on the Royal Mile, which was kitted out with cosy nooks and installations, as well as larger performance spaces. It proved to be a valuable addition to EIF’s string of venues, allowing visitors access to the heart of the festival. 

Finally, a bit of inventive relocation for Ironworks, the famous music and comedy venue in Inverness. Having seen the doors of its permanent home shut for good in 2023, the management team behind Ironworks, along with Elephant Sessions, are behind the new Black Isle Calling music festival (September). Its location? The Black Isle Brewery near Munlochy. What could possibly go wrong?