News

After three long years, the Orkney Folk Festival returns to a full-scale live event this weekend, and in triumphant style – breaking all previous ticket records. 

For the first time in the event’s 39-year history, over 7,000 individual concert tickets have sold in advance of the Stromness-based festival’s opening, today, with 17 of the festival’s 32 shows sold out. 

In addition to record-breaking live audiences, folk fans at home can also tune into this weekend’s festivities, with the addition of three recently announced live-streamed festival concerts. Dubbed ‘Virtually Orkney Folk Festival’ the festival’s inaugural hybrid edition builds upon the success of the previous two years’ online editions, bringing audiences around the world to Orkney in real time. 

One of Scotland’s longest-running folk festivals, the Orkney Folk Festival is set to welcome over 50 acts and over 250 musicians to the festival once again. Musicians and singers from throughout Scotland will join artists from England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, USA and India in appearing alongside scores of home-grown Orcadian artists in venues throughout Stromness and the Orkney mainland, over May 26-29.

This year’s live festival is the first since 2019, and follows...

Tickets for the 2022 Orkney Folk Festival are on sale now! It’s been a long three years since our last live event, and we cannot wait to see everyone back in Stromness and throughout Orkney next month.

As you might imagine after two years off, initial demand for tickets is quite high. If you’re thinking of coming, whether for the full weekend or just one event, be sure to get your tickets well in advance. A handful of events have already sold out, and whilst there’s still a good spread of availability across the weekend (don’t panic!), we also don’t want anyone missing out…

Check out the festival programme and grab your tickets today!

Sheet music for this year’s Fidders’ Rally, on Sunday 29 May, is now available!

Hosted by the West Mainland Strathspey and Reel Society, the annual Fiddlers’ Rally brings together a great number of musicians from throughout Orkney and further afield, for massed performances of traditional tunes. A staple of the Orkney Folk Festival programme since our very first, in 1983, the Rally – held each year on the festival’s Sunday afternoon – is a very popular event, for both participants and audiences.

It is open to all who want to participate (not just fiddlers) from an intermediate level upwards. If you fancy taking part, download the sheet music here to familiarise yourself with the tunes, head along to a rehearsal at 11.30am on Sunday 29th May (ahead of the Rally itself) in the Stromness Academy and you’re all set! Please note that you must attend the rehearsal in order to take part.

With the full line-up and festival programme announced, we’ve just updated our 2022 Spotify playlist! Over five and a half hours of tunes from visiting and Orcadian artists, as well as a few from the festival’s very own live Gathering recordings.

Check it out here and get to know (most of) the artists heading to the festival next month – and then go buy their merch at the gigs. Enjoy!