BBC Radio nan Gàidheal are delighted to be involved in this next project over the next year.
As Gaels, we sometimes tend to revisit and research older Gaelic songs – and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a rich archive available that’s been added to over hundreds of years that we need to keep alive in the 21st century through singing and teaching.
However, it’s also incredibly important that we’re adding to this canon all the time.
This new project is called Òran Ùr.
Across the coming year, we’re going to look at 50 Gaelic songs that have been written since the turn of the century – 2000 to 2025. Each Monday at 8am, a ten minute podcast will go live on BBC Sounds, focussing on a specific song, and this podcast will also be broadcast at 3:20pm on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal on the same day. This song in question will be played across BBC Radio nan Gàidheal programming across the course of that week, and their will be social media content too.
It will be launched on social media platforms and radio from Monday 17th February, with the first podcast going live a week later on Monday 24th February. We hope that the year will end with a concert as part of Celtic Connections 2026, which will be broadcast on BBC ALBA.