Congratulations to Piping Live! who has / have been nominated in Event of the Year sponsored by VisitScotland in the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards 2026. Vote for Piping Live! now! It’s going to be another great night at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards on Saturday 5th December in Paisley Arena, Lagoon Centre. Why not join us for a brilliant night of music and awards. Buy a ticket here.
We asked Finlay of Piping Live! the following questions.
Tell us about yourself
Piping Live! is the world's premier bagpipe festival, which in 2026 celebrated its 23rd edition. This year, the Festival Site came to life with a new layout, with two stages hosting an array of different events. The Centre stage saw events from 11am each morning with Pipe Idol – the prestigious Under 21 solo piping competition – to international artists playing indigenous bagpipes from Portugal, Ireland and Brittany, and each day a headline artist from the great and good of the trad world including Fras and Daimh. The Bothy stage saw intimate talks and performances from up and coming artists as well as podcast recordings. Each day in the Bothy started with Ceilidh Tots for Under 5s, brining young families in for a taste of trad, as well as a showcase by the National Piping Centre's Community Piping Clubs – the outreach project teaching young people across Scotland to play the pipes. Free pipe band performances on Sauchiehall Street, as well as daily recitals in Kelvingrove meant that 25% of all the festival programme was free to view. The week kicked off with the Piping Live! Big Band parade – a mass participation event that saw a 202 person-strong parade from Partick to the Kelvingrove Museum concourse to start the week in style. Piping Live! welcomed nearly 100 local residents via its free ticketed scheme, as well as over 250 U16s with free tickets available for young people. There were a raft of evening concerts including MAL at the Art School launching their new album, the International Quartet Competition with 6 Grade 1 Pipe Band competing just days before the worlds and the strand of Ceol Nua programming that ran through the festival this year. With an audience of over 25,000 people over 6 days, Piping Live! brings Glasgow to life with the sound of bagpipes each August.
Any particular career highlights?
This year, Piping Live! received funding from the Creative Scotland Expanded Festivals Fund to produce an ambitious programme of avant-garde, minimalist pieces with breton virtuoso Erwan Keravec – our "Ceol Nua" programme. Ceol Nua is term coined by musician Dr Matt Welch, literally meaning "new music" for piping that is avant-garde, experimental, and a cross-cultural approach that blends Scottish Highland bagpipes with minimalist composition.
There were 3 events as part of this strand at Piping Live! 2026. The pinnacle event was "In C// 20 Pipers" held at Glasgow's iconic Barrowland Ballroom on Tuesday 11th August, with 20 players on plinths on the famous sprung dancefloor, with the audience encouraged to experience the event in the best way for them – walking, standing, sitting, lying. Going close to one musician or experiencing the whole piece from the middle of the floor. Tickets were free to make this as accessible as possible. By reaching out to other organisations beyond the trad world Piping Live! succeeded in bringing together over 550 audience members, many of whom had never been to the festival before. The second performance saw "8 Pipers for Philip Glass" take place at the National Piping Centre. This is 4 pieces by Philip Glass, including two pages – where a collaboration between Scottish and Breton players saw 15 pipers performing this exceptional avant garde piece. The last performance was a brand new piece created specially for Piping Live! this year. It took place in the Centre Hall of Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and was called "Continuum for Bagpipes". 20 Scotland-based players took part in this minimalist piece playing only drones. Again the audience were invited to take part in the event by experiencing the event from inside the circle of players.
This strand of programming really elevated Piping Live! 2026 taking the event out of the piping and pipe band world and bringing the music to a much wider audience across Glasgow, bringing orchestral arrangement to the trad world and beyond.
What are your plans for the future?
Piping Live! aims to continue to develop and grow its programming and offering to the music community. Continuing to showcase indigenous bagpipes, platforming young talent as well as women and other underrepresented groups is at the heart of the programme build each year for the festival, and this will continue to be part of the ethos of Piping Live!.
With the Festival Site having been in place for 2 years, the team are continuing to develop plans and ideas – including some weather-proofing – for the new event space that has been created to develop a welcoming and inclusive space where everyone can come together and enjoy the live music on offer.
By continuing to welcome in local residents through our resident ticket scheme, as well as promoting the festival internationally the Piping Live! team wants the music to be shared everywhere, and mean something to everyone who comes into contact with it. Reaching into other artforms to elevate and amplify the instrument will allow the festival to continue to grow and develop in the future.
Piping Live! Social Media
Website: http://www.pipinglive.co.uk
Facebook: @PipingLiveFestival
Instagram: @pipinglive
YouTube: @nationalpipingcentre
TikTok: @pipinglive
Listen to music: http://n/a
The 2026 MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards are on the 5th December 2026 in Paisley Arena, Lagoon Centre! You will be able to watch it live in person (buy a ticket here).
Hosted by Scottish personalities Alistair Heather and Mary Ann Kennedy, the night will welcome live performances from some of the brightest lights on the thriving trad scene today including Valtos, Gnoss, Sian, Fèis Phàislig, Spodo Komodo and BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Rachel Groves and many more!
If you would like to support Hands Up for Trad in their work with Scottish trad music and musicians why not become a friend of Hands Up for Trad. In addition to our high profile events like the Scots Trad Music Awards, we also deliver a less well known, education programme for young people from 8yrs right through to young adults at the start of their careers. Read more here.