FAQs

We’re unable to make individual accommodation recommendations, but Orkney has a fantastic range of options catering for all preferences and budgets – from self-catering to hostels, hotels to campsites. We recommend visiting our friends at Orkney.com to narrow down your search and find the perfect place to rest up after a busy day at the festival.

We’d recommend using Orkney.com’s comprehensive travel guide to plan your journey, but there are a range of options available including daily flights and ferry connections. The ferries connect with rail and bus links to major Scottish cities so it’s possible to make the journey without bringing a car. If you’re not sure where to start, local business Scapa Travel would be happy to help you plan your trip.

The festival doesn’t offer any audience transport to venues, however there’s a good network of public buses between Stromness and Kirkwall and to other areas. You can find out more about our bus network on the Orkney Islands Council website. You might also have a chance to do some island hopping by joining events happening in Orkney’s North or South isles, which you can get to on Orkney Ferries or Loganair inter-isles flights. We recommend planning ahead to make sure you know how and when you’re going to get to where you need to be.

Local taxi firms will be very busy over festival weekend, so we recommend booking ahead. There are several local firms including Craigies Taxis on 01856 878787, Orkney Cabs on 01856 875000 and Orkney Taxis on 01856 875511.

We’d recommend checking the event key in our festival programme to see which venues offer food and drink, as this varies over the course of the weekend. Some of our venues have a bar and if food’s available it’s more likely to be a snack than a full meal.

Orkney is famed for its high quality food and drink, so you’ll be spoilt for choice! There’s a range of excellent eateries, so check out Orkney.com’s eating out guide. Restaurants in Stromness are usually full during the festival so make sure you book in advance, though there’s always takeaway options available throughout the town too.

The festival always takes place the last weekend in May to coincide with the late May UK bank holiday, giving you a day to recover from an action-packed weekend! We run more than 30 events during four days from the Thursday evening to Sunday evening. Check our website banner for the dates of the next festival, which we’ve agreed years in advance.

We offer a multi-event format where you buy tickets for individual concerts, dances, workshops and clubs, allowing you to tailor make your perfect festival experience. Events take place in a range of venues across Orkney, though Stromness is at the heart of the festival with lots of activity in the Town Hall and Community Centre over the weekend. As we don’t offer weekend or day tickets like other festivals, there’s no accommodation, such as camping, included with your ticket, meaning you need to organise your own plans for somewhere to stay.

With history, culture, wildlife, arts, crafts and food and drink around every corner, Orkney really does have something for everyone. We’re unable to make individual recommendations, but you can find a wealth of information on Orkney.com to help you plan your visit.

You’ll be supporting an award-winning music festival run by a dedicated team of volunteers who are passionate about celebrating folk music! And if that’s not enough, you’ll also have the chance to access exclusive events during the festival, buy your tickets (two adults and unlimited children per event) in advance of the general sale and receive 10% off Orkney Folk Festival merchandise. NorthLink Ferries also usually offer us very generous travel discounts for Orkney Friends, but please note as we have to apply for their sponsorship annually this is not guaranteed year-on-year. Visit our Orkney Friends page for more information.

Orkney Friends memberships are on sale for nine months each year. We’ll open sales on 1 June following that year’s festival and you can sign up any time before the following 28 February – or 29 February in a leap year. Your membership lasts for 12 months following the date you sign up.

Orkney Friends is sold as an annual rolling membership. Memberships start from the date you sign up as an Orkney Friend on our website and last for a period of 12 months. At the end of the 12 month period memberships will renew automatically unless you contact us at friends@orkneyfolkfestival.com to cancel.

The exact date for the Orkney Friends ticket pre-sale will vary each year, but we’ll confirm this with all Orkney Friends members well in advance of it happening. For the 2023 festival, Orkney Friends will be able to buy tickets from 10am GMT on Saturday 25 March 2023.

Your account is very clever and already knows you’re an Orkney Friend! All you have to do is login using the email address and password you created when signing up for Orkney Friends, then you’ll be able to start adding tickets to your basket. If you’ve forgotten your password we recommend resetting it in advance of the sale to make sure you have no issues when tickets go live.

As outlined in our terms and conditions, Orkney Friends are entitled to buy tickets for one event per programme timeslot. This means if you buy tickets for an event happening at 7.30pm on Friday night, you can’t also book tickets for another event happening in a different venue at the same time. These timeslot restrictions will automatically be in place on our ticket system when you go to buy tickets, so please bear this in mind when planning what you’d like to attend.

For the 2023 festival, Orkney Friends are able to book free tickets for our BBC Radio Orkney Live Lounge sessions on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 May. These tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis, giving you a behind the scenes chance to enjoy some exclusive performances and interviews with artists for free.

Orkney Friends members are entitled to buy up to two adult and unlimited children’s tickets per event. However, the ticket allowance covers one event per programme timeslot across the whole weekend, so you can’t buy tickets for multiple events happening at the same time. For example, you can’t use your allowance to buy tickets for two events that are both at 7.30pm on Friday, but you can order tickets for another event on Saturday at 7.30pm.

Yes, it’s possible for the accounts of two Orkney Friends to be linked together so you can buy up to four adult tickets and unlimited children’s tickets per event per programme timeslot. However, we need to know in advance of tickets going on sale that you want to do this, otherwise you’ll only be able to use the standard Friends ticket allowance on your account. Please send your account linking request to us by 22 March 2023 at friends@orkneyfolkfestival.com, sharing the full names and email addresses of the two account holders you’d like to link, so we set this up for you.

Stromness has a fantastic atmosphere over the festival weekend, with music pouring out of pubs throughout the town. We’ll publish a schedule of planned informal, social tunes on our Orkney Folk Festival noticeboard at Stromness’s pierhead during the weekend so you can see what’s happening when.

We’re excited to be launching the programme week commencing 20 March 2023. If you’d like to know when the programme is available we recommend signing up to our mailing list to get email updates.

Tickets go on sale to Orkney Friends at 10am GMT on Saturday 25 March 2023, before the general release at 7pm BST on Tuesday 28 March 2023.

You’ll be sent an email containing a link to your digital tickets once you’ve paid for your order. You can either download and print a PDF, or if you have a mobile device you can save digital tickets directly to your Apple or Google Wallet. Please make sure you take care of saving or printing your tickets well in advance of attending event(s), as we can’t allow entry if you don’t bring your tickets with you. With digital tickets in particular, please be aware that there can be areas of patchy mobile signal in Orkney and we can’t guarantee that all mobile networks will have strong reception at our venues.

If you don’t have a mobile device it’s possible to download and save an A4 PDF version of your tickets, which you can then print off to take with you. If you don’t have a printer, local businesses, Sinclair Office Supplies (based in Stromness and Kirkwall) and Orkney Office Supplies (based in Kirkwall) would be happy to help you.

We’re working hard to reduce the environmental impact of the festival, and one way we can do that is by significantly reducing the number of tickets being printed each year. Sending the tickets directly to you is also a much more efficient process, making sure you’ve securely received your tickets within minutes of placing an order. This change also helps us to significantly reduce the amount of admin involved in the ticket process; it takes a lot of time for our volunteer team to print over 7,500 tickets in advance of the festival!

We understand that sometimes unexpected things happen and tickets get mislaid in advance of the festival. However, we can’t allow anyone to enter a venue without tickets, so please don’t ask us to let you in without them. Our volunteer teams have a lot of people to admit in a short space of time and need to keep queues moving, so won’t be able to sort this on the door of any shows. If you need any help with your tickets in the run up to the festival please contact us on tickets@orkneyfolkfestival.com and we’ll be happy to help.

Our digital tickets will be securely emailed to you, making the process more efficient and direct in comparison to them being sent in the post. It’s up to you to look after your tickets and keep them safe in the run up to the festival, just as if they had arrived in the post weeks ahead of the event. To help keep them secure, please don’t share your tickets with anyone who you aren’t planning to attend the event with. If someone else gets a copy of your ticket and scans it at the door of the event to gain entry before you do, we’ll unfortunately have to refuse you entry.

If you’ve recently been to events sold through large ticket companies like Ticketmaster, you’ll find that our digital tickets work through a similar approach. When you arrive, you’ll be asked to take out your ticket, either as a digital or printed copy. It’ll have a barcode on it, which one of our friendly volunteers will scan to allow you entry into the event.

If you don’t plan to print your tickets to take with you, we recommend saving a copy of your digital tickets to your Apple or Google Wallet, or another safe space within your phone, like a files folder which you can access offline. We can’t guarantee that you’ll definitely have a strong enough signal to download tickets when you arrive at all our venues, so please make sure you come prepared to avoid any disappointment.

All our tickets are non-refundable as outlined in our terms and conditions. Please take care to only order the tickets you actually need as we can’t offer you a refund for anything bought by mistake.

All our tickets are non-refundable as outlined in our terms and conditions, but you’re able to resell your tickets at your own discretion. This is not something we’re able to do on your behalf either in advance of or during the festival – including at the doors of events if you have a last minute change of plans. Please bear this in mind and don’t be offended if our team of volunteers are unable to help you with any extra tickets you might have.

Check the ticketing page of our website in advance of the event to see if it’s sold out or if there might still be tickets left on the door. If there are tickets available these will be sold on a first come, first served basis, so we recommend getting to the venue as soon as the doors open to secure your space. Please note we’re only able to accept cash for tickets that are sold at the door of our venues.

Your account is very clever and already knows you’re an Orkney Friend! All you have to do is login using the email address and password you created when signing up for Orkney Friends, then you’ll be able to start adding tickets to your basket. If you’ve forgotten your password we recommend resetting it in advance of the sale to make sure you have no issues when tickets go live.

As outlined in our terms and conditions, Orkney Friends are entitled to buy tickets for one event per programme timeslot. This means if you buy tickets for an event happening at 7.30pm on Friday night, you can’t also book tickets for another event happening in a different venue at the same time. These timeslot restrictions will automatically be in place on our ticket system when you go to buy tickets, so please bear this in mind when planning what you’d like to attend.

For the 2023 festival, Orkney Friends are able to book free tickets for our BBC Radio Orkney Live Lounge sessions on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 May. These tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis, giving you a behind the scenes chance to enjoy some exclusive performances and interviews with artists for free.

We don’t offer a waiting list as all our tickets are non-refundable. It’s up to individual ticketholders to resell any tickets they’re unable to use and we can’t facilitate this between different groups of customers.

Our ticketing system is part of the Access Card scheme, which allows you to quickly and easily tell us about any accessibility requirements you have in advance of joining us at an event. You can link your Access Card to your online account before buying any tickets to make sure we receive your accessibility information. Our friendly team of volunteers will then be on hand to support you with any adjustments you need at each event, so we can make sure you have a great festival experience!

Orkney Friends members are entitled to buy up to two adult and unlimited children’s tickets per event. However, the ticket allowance covers one event per programme timeslot across the whole weekend, so you can’t buy tickets for multiple events happening at the same time. For example, you can’t use your allowance to buy tickets for two events that are both at 7.30pm on Friday, but you can order tickets for another event on Saturday at 7.30pm.

Yes, it’s possible for the accounts of two Orkney Friends to be linked together so you can buy up to four adult tickets and unlimited children’s tickets per event per programme timeslot. However, we need to know in advance of tickets going on sale that you want to do this, otherwise you’ll only be able to use the standard Friends ticket allowance on your account. Please send your account linking request to us by 22 March 2023 at friends@orkneyfolkfestival.com, sharing the full names and email addresses of the two account holders you’d like to link, so we set this up for you.

Our three busiest venues are in Stromness at the Town Hall, Academy and Community Centre. Aside from these three, events taking place in local community centres or halls across Orkney vary every year.

Our ticketing system is part of the Access Card scheme, which allows you to quickly and easily tell us about any accessibility requirements you have in advance of joining us at an event. You can link your Access Card to your online account before buying any tickets to make sure we receive your accessibility information. Our friendly team of volunteers will then be on hand to support you with any adjustments you need at each event, so we can make sure you have a great festival experience!

We’d recommend checking the event key in our festival programme to see which venues offer food and drink, as this varies over the course of the weekend. Some of our venues have a bar and if food’s available it’s more likely to be a snack than a full meal.

Yes, Stromness Community Centre is home to our Festival Club offering a fully seated, intimate, cabaret concert. If you’re looking for something a bit livelier, The Stomps are the place to be, giving you the chance to burn off some energy while enjoying local and visiting acts.

Flash photography and filming is strictly prohibited, as well as being a distraction for performing artists and fellow audience members. Please keep your phones and cameras away so everyone can enjoy the event.

Please let us know if you’re interested in volunteering for Orkney Folk Festival 2023 by emailing volunteer@orkneyfolkfestival.com. If you volunteered in 2022, we’ll have your email address on record and will be in touch when we begin to make arrangements for this year’s festival.

Volunteer tasks can vary. Typically, the majority of shifts will involve front of house duties such as stewarding, checking tickets on the door, showing audience members to their seats and letting them know where the toilets are etc. However, we also require volunteers to staff our festival shop, drive artists to venues and help with setting up and clearing down our main venues before and after the festival.

As a volunteer you’ll often get to enjoy parts of performances, but you’ll be required to be front of house for most of the event. Therefore, if there are events you’re really excited to see we recommend that you buy tickets rather than volunteering, as we can’t guarantee how much of the event you’ll have to time to watch.

As a charity we’re unable to provide any travel and accommodation for volunteers, including getting you to the venue(s) you’re volunteering at. Please see the accommodation and travel FAQ section above for more information to help you plan your visit.

The festival programme will be released in March 2023. After this, we’ll begin to make arrangements and the volunteer rota will be drawn up during April and May 2023. We’ll provide further updates nearer the time.

An Orkney Folk Festival committee representative will be present to run each event. As a volunteer you’re generally there to support them and won’t be left alone or in charge of a task you’re uncomfortable with.