The Saltire Gathering update Festival date change announcement

As you know, we had set a provisional date of September 20th and 21st 2025 for the inaugural Saltire Gathering, a new Festival of Scotland and have been working towards this for some considerable time. We have received a tremendous amount of support for the initiative as well as good thoughts and advice from individuals and organisations that we consider integral to the success of the festival.

We have always maintained that we will proceed with the festival in 2025 if funding is sufficient to create an event of note; something that is robust and sets the standard for future events. Key to this is to have a festival that is financially sound which means producing an event that not only delivers in terms of creativity and impact but one which does not leave us in a precarious position. We are also clear that there is a benchmark that we will not drop below because in doing so, the festival will likely be so small that it has the capacity to disengage sponsors, funders and supporters which will make it all more challenging to seek funding for future years.

Recently we have been in conversation with a private donor who has, at time of writing, confirmed verbally, sufficient seed funding to allow us to hire a sponsorship sales manager. Whilst there are no guarantees as to how much sponsorship (and additional funding) will be raised, our feeling is that by postponing the festival until the end of May/beginning June 2026 gives us a longer sales time and every opportunity to create a much stronger and more impactful festival along the lines of what was originally conceived.

This is an exciting and positive move and one we believe will be welcomed by our supporters. By doing so this allows us to:

• Engage with the North American audience much more strongly given the months of May and June are not only more financially attractive, but many families are more able to travel at that time of year. Originally, we had looked to produce the festival at this time but for several reasons we had no choice but to go with September.
• Event Scotland are keen to see more events take place on the shoulder months of the traditional summer holiday period and will welcome the move.
• Stirling 900-anniversary ends in April 2025 and while the perception is that it will not impact The Saltire Gathering, we believe there could be a commercial impact on local sponsorship.

We are excited by this decision and believe that we will produce a memorable first festival that will set the standard for future events.

The Saltire Gathering

Festival Board