The 14th Big Burns Supper programme has launched with a total reworking of the entire festival format for the 2026 edition of the winter festival.
The continuation of the Northern Lights Dumfries programme, which includes 14 sound and light installations as part of a free town-wide trail co-created with a range of different partners, will help to bring light to the dark winter months, taking place from the 15th to the 19th of January 2026 and will include a five-day Winter Food & Drink Village in the heart of the High Street.
At the centre of the light trail experience will be Burns Light, a brand-new historical retelling of Robert Burns and the Burns Mausoleum, which is the resting place of Scotland’s most important son. A new music score created with emerging music creators in the town will bring the mausoleum to life through a six-minute audiovisual projection which will be beamed onto the white monument over the five days.
The project will examine the famous visitors to the Mausoleum over the last 208 years as well as famous people who have been influenced by Robert Burns, including musicians like Bob Dylan and The Beatles.
Other highlights include:
Phantom Spectra, which is commissioned by the Stove Network and explores the town’s history with the travelling fair community which goes back nearly 200 years. An odyssey of the fair. A ghost in the town. A ride through memory, presence, and what is yet to come. Phantom Spectra is an immersive, geo-located binaural sound installation that draws you into the spirit of the fair — part documentary, part dream. A story that slips into the invisible, where past, future, and spirit collide.
Divided, which is a new work that first appeared at the festival last year and takes place inside in an abandoned nightclub. The piece uses mirrors and recreates an outside world inside with real grass and Christmas trees that the community donate. The piece explores the shifting view on immigration and asks the spectator to see themselves as others see them and immerses the audience into a sonic
Washing Line makes a return to the festival which will be hung up Gass House Close and will bring forgotten voices back to life in a re-working of this favourite installation which was last seen in 2017.
Birds on a Wire is a new installation created by the community and will be the centrepiece of the festival on the High Street. Spectators will be able to interact with birds who have visited the town centre by sitting on a telephone wire.
Biofluorescence is a new work created by Summerhill Community Centre in partnership with RSPBS Scotland and will bring to life on of Scotland’s only rain forests through an interactive silent disco experience which viewers can watch projected onto the side of the Midsteeple Quarter.
Other highlights of the light trail include:
Lights of Hope, which form part of the lighting up of the promenade and town centre spaces by Dumfries Partnership Action Group.
Norway Haus which celebrates the town’s Norwegian connection during World War II at the Venue Nightclub.
Immortal Memory, the immersive experience which allows spectators to light a candle for someone they loved at Greyfriars Church.
Lots of local venues are getting in on the action by lighting up their windows, including:
The recently renovated Ewart Library who will be celebrating their programme through Reading Room.
Dumfries Table Tennis Club will be offering young people the chance to play glow-in-the-dark table tennis.
Rabbie’s Winter Village in the centre of the High Street will include five days of music, food and drink will be presented by local musicians, artists and producers from across the region as well as a free family hub across the five days.
Dumfries Carnival will run through the festival on Saturday the 17th of January and will include a cast of over 2,000 members of the community dressed up, dancing and bearing lanterns. The theme for this year’s carnival is outer Space, including links to the first Moon landing.
The festival will conclude on the 25th of January 2026 with a special Burns Night edition of Le Haggis.
Executive Producer of Big Burns Supper Graham Main said, “Our revised programme allows us to place Dumfries at the centre of our celebration. Working with a variety of different partners, we are able to make use of empty buildings, abandoned spaces and forgotten landmarks by transforming them into performance spaces temporarily.
In our pilot edition of Northern Lights Dumfries in January 2025, demonstrated that there is huge demand in exploring these hidden spaces in different ways. Our light trail is unique in that sense in that audiences are inside and outside of spaces.
The joyful part of this remodelling for us has been discovering new collaborative relationships with a variety of partners who share our desire to reimagine Dumfries in 2026.”
The majority of the events are entirely free with some VIP tickets on sale for the light trail to allow organisers to create revenue for the event and allow audiences to skip the queue during the light trail.
Big Burns Supper is supported by Dumfries & Galloway Council, Historic Environment Scotland and EventScotland. Northern Lights programme is supported by the privately funded Holywood Trust.
More information about the programme can be found at www.bigburnssupper.com
2,000 participants expected to take part in Dumfries Carnival as well as 35 different community groups as far away as Langholm and Wigtown.
120 volunteers are busy making costumes between August and January.
10 different community bands from outside Dumfries & Galloway will be taking part including Drum Nation (Kendal), Blue Jam Samba (Penrith), Oi Musica! (Edinburgh), North Tyneside Steel Band (Newcastle) and Cramlington Caribbean Crew (Northumberland)