Celtic Connections 2026 kicks off!

Celtic Connections 2026 kicks off next week - Thursday, 15 January - and is set to attracts thousands of music lovers  across the world to Glasgow for the premier winter music festival of its kind. Famed for its adventurous spirit, the festival will stage more than 300 events across 25 venues and spanning more than 10 genres across 18 days.

I have attended, covered and photographed at the festival since 2008, nearly twenty years now!! The lighting at concerts is now much more sophisticated. At this cold, dark time of year Celtic Connections offers some joyous warmth with the range, quality and diversity of their unique and international collaborations. Over the years I’ve been to so many memorable concerts. 

 

Everything You Need to Know About Celtic Connections 2026

 

The renowned festival every year transforms Glasgow in January into a must-visit destination for music lovers is now just over a week away.

Celtic Connections – Scotland’s premier winter festival of its kind – attracts thousands of fans and performers to the city from all corners of the world, offering unforgettable moments, groundbreaking collaborations, and a love for music that only Glasgow can provide with its many outstanding venues.

 

When is it?

The countdown is on! Celtic Connections 2026 runs from 15 January to 1 February 2026. Over 300 events at 25+ venues across the city, with audiences of more than 110,000 expected to experience Glasgow’s biggest winter celebration of music and culture.

 

Who’s performing?

With a lineup of over 1,200 artists, of global icons, homegrown heroes and breakthrough names.

Headliners 2026 include country music royalty Emmylou Harris, legendary Cuban collective Buena Vista All Stars, Americana powerhouse Lucinda Williams,Scottish folk-rock pioneers Skerryvore, Grammy-winning banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck, Senegalese orchestral sensation Baobab,

 

Québec’s vibrant music scene contributes acts like Le Vent du Nord and Bon Débarras, highlighting the festival’s commitment to international cultural exchange. indie duo Watchhouse and Mon Rovîa, who tells his refugee story through the healing sound of Afro-Appalachian folk.

Opening Concert at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, World Connections, and a range of one-off collaborations featured throughout the programme. Festival favourites return, including Roaming Roots Revue (Icons Vol. 2), Transatlantic Sessions, and the Danny Kyle Open Stage that showcases emerging talent.

 

Is it for young people?

Absolutely! Celtic Connections is dedicated to making world-class music accessible to everyone, including the next generation. The popular Under 26 Festival Pass is back, providing discounted entry for those aged 18 - 25 to a selection of events – perfect for students, young professionals, and anyone discovering new sounds.

Additionally, the acclaimed Education Programme returns, with thousands of local schoolchildren invited to special concerts and workshops, planting the seeds for a lifelong love of music.

 

What type of music can you hear?

Celtic Connections is famed for its adventurous spirit – audiences will enjoy traditional folk, roots, indie, and world music; blues, jazz, orchestral, Americana, and even electronic influences. 

Experience Gaelic song and Scottish ballads, orchestral world premieres, like The Ayoub Sisters’ Arabic Symphony, roots collaborations linking Scotland with Brazil, Mexico, and beyond, and captivating new commissions. Whether you crave the pulse of a late-night ceilidh or the intimacy of story-driven folk, the festival showcases music in all its diversity.

 

What’s new for 2026?

Once again ambitious collaborations and boundary-pushing debuts take centre stage:

•    For the first time, the Emirates Arena will host two back to back shows: an incredible farewell show from Emmylou Harris and its largest folk-rock party yet with Skerryvore

•    Citizens Theatre becomes an official festival venue for the first time, welcoming the likes of Glasgow’s own spellbinding Alice Faye and Òran Ùr, a night celebrating 25 years of new Gaelic songs

•    Cross-cultural projects bring together musicians from Scotland, Sweden, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil and Iraq

•    Innovative shows like Tràigh Mhòr will bring Brazilian and Scottish roots together, and the world premiere of Delusions blends music, spoken word and multimedia art, while the Maclean Brothers’ night will celebrate extraordinary stories of endurance and global connection

•    A new multi-year partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival sees groundbreaking collaborations between Scotland's celebrated writers and musicians including The Golden Road featuring William Dalrymple, India Alba and renowned artists.

 

How do I get a ticket?

Tickets for the festival are available now at www.celticconnections.com. 

 

Celtic Connections Creative Producer, Donald Shaw, said: “Celtic Connections is big, bold and inspiring – it’s a festival that isn’t afraid to take risks, champions artistic expression and believes in collaboration, and having fun. There’s a special kind of magic that fills Glasgow every January during Celtic Connections. Come and join us to experience unforgettable shows, world-class artists, and surprises around every corner. We can’t wait to share these moments with everyone who loves music as much as we do!”

 

This year’s festival, delivered by Glasgow Life in partnership with Innis & Gunn, promises inspiration, discovery and the warmest of welcomes – here’s everything you need to know.

Celtic Connections is delivered with funding from Glasgow City Council through Glasgow Life. Creative Scotland and The Scottish Government Festivals Expo Fund continue to provide invaluable support to Celtic Connections.

CELTIC CONNECTIONS REVIEW 2025

Loudon Wainwright III

Julie Fowlis

Celtic Connections 2025 closed on a high note, presenting the world’s best trad, folk, world and roots music to Glasgow each winter. The 32nd edition of Scotland’s premier winter music festival reached attendances of 110,000, 125 sold out shows across 18 days. (Despite rescheduled events, the festival made a triumphant return after Storm Éowyn  to match 2023 festival attendance figures.)  For three weeks, Glasgow – a UNESCO City of Music – reflected the richness of Celtic traditions and demonstrated the power of global cultural exchange and innovation. From a spectacular birthday celebration to mark Glasgow 850 for the festival’s Opening Concert, to 300 community choir singers joining Karine Polwart on stage for an emotion-fuelled show. 

1,500 musicians from 40 nationalities took part in 300 events in 24 venues, celebrating the unifying power of live music and vibrancy of Scotland’s cultural scene. Over 7,000 pupils travelled to Glasgow Concert Hall for the festival’s Schools Concerts and music workshops were delivered to every primary 7 pupil across Glasgow. 900 people of all ages took part in ceilidhs and family events, and 1,500 took part in music and song workshops.

Lake Street Dive

Concerts such as Transatlantic Sessions proves the size of the audience for this kind of traditional, acoustic music. Celtic Connections music festival has taken the closed off live local pub sessions on to the bigger stage. And also taken Celtic music forward, while respecting the traditions. In particular certain folk musicians aim to keep carrying the stream. 

 

*Highlight concerts for me included - Dialogues Su a Lee, with Donald Shaw, Duncan Chisholm and Hamish Napier. Su a Lee celebrated her many collaborations. This wasn’t a concert about Lee’s classical musical roots (vie Julliard school) but about her journey through Scottish trad folk journeys and through it’s innovative new directions. 

 

Blue Rose Code gave an assured performance at the Pavilion with his emotive, soulful songs and backed by his accomplished band.  Lake street Dive from Boston at the Old Fruitmarket venue, got everyone in party mood with their upbeat soul, good times vibes. The 30^th Transatlantic Sessions was led by impressive artists – Niall McCabe from Ireland, accomplished Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams from Tennessee, Loudon Wainwright III who commanded the concert hall stage with his gritty character and story telling songs, plus the wonderful Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis, with her latest album ‘Following the Thread.’ 

Another highlight was the diversity on display with the anticipation of the festival’s Opening Concert – with notably Madison Cunningham, James Grant, Siobhan Miller and Oswali Project. While I might have wished to hear from some of Glasgow’s outstanding poets.  

There is always also an accomplished international flavour at the festival. CC hosted q concert of a Palestinian/Scottish collaboration with Palestinian pipers. Unfortunately three pipers had their visas refused by the Home Office. Bethlehem Calling: An evening of stories, music and pipers from Palestine. Bethlehem Calling champions artists and young people from both nations to tell a vital story of our time; sharing the experiences of girls in Bethlehem during the 2nd Intifada (2000-05) alongside to present-day testimony from students 20 years on. Performance integrated with music.

 Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams 

Niall McCabe

Duncan Chisholm

The program remained concert based, with enough to satisfy the broadest of tastes, whether it’s the Hebridean punk of Peat and Diesel at the Emirates Arena, the inspired Gaelic pipe and song collaboration Canntaireachd, at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (GRCH), country hero Lyle Lovett at the same venue, or KT Tunstall reprising her Eye to the Telescope album 20 years on at both the Concert Hall and the Barrowland Ballroom.

Sometimes (if not often) culture leads the way for new visions. And new collaborations of how to view the world today and how our futures might be. Celtic Connections shines a light on this vision, after all music is the universal language.    CELTIC CONNECTIONS - https://www.celticconnections.com

Keeping the Celtic Traditions Alive! 

Sixty years ago the folk revival followed on from the Scottish Cultural Renaissance from Montrose in the 1930s – with figures such a Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, William Soutar, Edwin Morgan, Neil Gunn, Eric Linklater, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Willa Muir, Nan Shepherd, Catherine Carswell, George Blake, Iain Chrichton Smith, Sorley MacLean, 

Later 1960s poets, writers, song smiths, song collectors, such as Hamish Henderson, Margaret Bennet, Dick Gaughan. Just as poets – Allan Ramsey, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns - wrote to keep the Scots language, culture, ballads and heritage alive, in 1700s after the union 1707 (and the suppressions of Scots musical instruments and highland dress after Culloden)

 

Celtic Connections music festival has brought folk music (and indie, world, roots, Americana) onto the bigger stage. Back in the 70s I had little idea when I attended Sandy Bells bar Edinburgh, and folk festivals – that there was a revival happening. I feel so fortunate to have enjoyed this experiences of the wonderful live music. So odd looking back.  

 

Today there are Celtic musicians keeping Scotland’s musical traditions alive such as – Julie Fowlis, Kris Drever, Karine Polwart, Manran, Braebach, Duncan Chisholm, Ross Ainslie, Glasgow Trad Collective and many more. My impression is that many younger musicians are highly aware of the traditions. 

 

Sadly troubadours such as the folk legends Dick Gaughan, Rab Noakes, Michael Marra, Gerry Rafferty, are no longer with us or performing. I remember Noakes saying – ‘A present with no past has no future.’ Scotland has a centuries old tradition of believing in the rights of all people. From the clan system, Declaration of Arbroath, scholars such a George Buchanan, Enlightenment, and Robert Burns humanity. This matters for our views of the world. Music without any hinterland lacks substance, soul and depth. 

 

The voices of the ordinary folks. In 1960s Hamish Henderson wrote, ‘Freedom Come All Ye’

 

Opening concert Celtic connections 2025 Glasgow 850

Tonight’s welcome return Opening Concert of Celtic Connections the world leading folk and roots music festival, began with the dramatic horn blowing of an ancient Celtic instrument the  Carnyx, (a wind instrument used by the Celts during the Iron Age, between c. 200 BCE and c. 200 CE), brought over the heads of the venue. 

 

Glasgow 850 Opening concert, heralded the start of the city’s year-long 850th birthday celebration. ‘Let Glasgow Flourish’ is the motto on the city’s coat of arms, and this special concert paid tribute to the city’s rich artistic heritage and flourishing future through a concert incorporating music, spoken-word, dance and film. 

 

This concert was hosted by Siobhan Miller and Roddy Hart, and celebrated the breadth and talent of musicians, artists and poets Glasgow has produced and how this has fed into the very heart of Celtic Connections. Glasgow is a diverse, multi-cultural and vibrant city.

Glasgow Trad Collective

First there was energetic reels and jigs from the Glasgow’s Trad Collective (of Ben Nevis bar). We had nostalgia with the Bluebell’s 80s song 'Young at Heart'. Behind the stage were projected black and white images of Glasgow by photographer – Oscar Marzaroli.

 

Glasgow was celebrated with performances by the Joyous choir of Maryhill, While the Indian collective Qawali Project raised the energy levels with warm applause. The talented pipers Ross Ainslie and Finlay Macdonald impressed as did the string ensemble who performed world-renowned Glasgow composer Craig Armstrong’s Immer (Forever). 

 

Grammy award-winning American singer songwriter Madison Cunningham impressed with her haunting vocals on her song ‘Home’.Glaswegian James Grant, performed several Glasgow songs – and along with Siobhan Miller and Paul McKenna delighted us with their rendition of Michael Marra’s song “Mither Glasgow.” After which we were treated to a grand finale of multi-instrumentalists and uplifting tunes. 

James Grant

Glasgow has world class art galleries, and an ancient and leading university. Glasgow is the city of music and boasts world famous venues including the Barrowlands  King Tuts, Oran Mor, Old Fruitmarket. 

  

Image: 'Playing Ring, Gorbals, School Playground’ 1963, © Oscar Marzaroli Collection, courtesy of Street Level Photoworks.

 From the permanent exhibition ‘Oscar Marzaroli’s Gorbals’ at Gorbals Library.

 CELTIC CONNECTIONS - https://www.celticconnections.com

Celtic Connections 2024!

 

 

Folk music. What is folk music?

This festival is definitively NOT about only about folk music. Some might argue it should be more narrowly about Trad – while others want to hear experimental cross overs and colorations. 

Celtic Connections is definitely full of unexpected collaboration. One of its strengths is it diversity – crossing boundaries while drawing on Celtic heritage and traditions, 

 

There is always a wide variety of MUSIC at Celtic Connections – with its breadth of genres and cultures. The festival is known as Europe’s premier folk, roots and world music festival, and the home of  spectacular musical collaborations. Celtic Connections has continued to expand into a multitude of genres over its 30-year history. In 2024 the festival will stage an ambitious  genre-defying programme of acoustic, traditional, indie, Americana, Jazz, blues, orchestral, experimental and more. 

 

Americana – Bruce Hornsby, Bela Fleck, Molly Fleck. 

Pipes – Finlay MacDonald, Skerryvore (folk rock), Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton. 

Gaelic – Julie Fowlis, Joy Dunlop, Breabach, Daimh

New composition, orchestral

Fusion, and rock bands, 

Trad music, jazz and blues

Ceilidh and dance, 

 

Some highlights - 

Concert for revolutionary John MacLean - Red Clydeside . 

Irish group, the Bothy Band -

Dougie MacLean anniversary concert. 

 

The festival includes a Showcase, education, open mic, late night sessions, new talent, multi-cultural. Plus the Scottish National Whisky festival

Celtic Connections of one of the world’s largest winter music and folk festivals, I always remember being in the Press office with a London reporter. I said you must have folk festivals like this in London – he replied, ’Oh nothing at all on this scale!”

“Celtic Connections stands as a testament to Glasgow’s status as the UK’s top cultural and creative city, honoured by the European commission. The festival embodies a global tapestry of music, welcoming diverse traditions from across the world. “

 

I’ve been covering Celtic Connections concerts from 2008-2024 (over 16 years) with both reviews and photos. I have so many highlights to recall – impressive opening concerts, old Fruitmarket buzz, the ABC venue (sadly no longer there due to the art school fire), the late sessions, Danny Kyle stage – and so much more.

TICKETS   at www.celticconnections.com. Celtic Connections 2024.