Celtic Connections

The UK’s leading celebration of folk music returns to Glasgow on the 16th January to the 2nd February 2020. The Celtic Connections Festival features; concerts, ceilidhs, talks, art exhibitions, workshops, free events, late night sessions and a host of special one-off musical collaborations.

The Celtic Connections festival started in 1994 and has since been held every January, growing with popularity year upon year. The festival showcases traditional home-grown talent but also attracts acts from all over the world, with an estimated 2500 acts converging on Glasgow during this time. Previous years have featured Led zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Sinéad O’Connor, Shane MacGowan, Laura Marling to name just a few.

The festival takes place in 20 venues across the city with 300 separate events happening throughout, with the total audiences being more than 100,000 people.

One of the first acts announced for this year’s festival had to change to a larger venue due to high demand!

At the core of the festival is the Education Programme, which sees thousands of school children attend free morning concerts experiencing live music ranging from Burns to spiritual and blues. Every night of the festival, once the concerts are over, the late-night Celtic Connections Festival Club runs through to the small hours of the morning. The club has no set programme and is renowned for one-off collaborations, not able to be seen anywhere else, between musicians appearing at the festival.