Highland games and the Braemar Gathering: what happens, who runs them, and what the organisers' own pages say

The short answer

A Highland games is a day of competition in a Scottish town or village: heavy throwing events, running and jumping, Highland dancing and solo piping, with massed pipe bands at many games and a tug o' war at some.[3] The Royal Scottish Highland Games Association, which describes itself as the officially recognised UK sports governing body for Highland games, lists over fifty member events and gives the season as mid-May to mid-September.[1][2] The Braemar Gathering is one of those members.[1] Its organiser holds it on the first Saturday in September at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park in Braemar, in the Cairngorms National Park, and gives Saturday 4 September 2027 as the next date.[4][5]

What happens at a Highland games

The association's visitors page groups the competitions into three kinds. The heavy events are the hammer, the caber, weight for distance, weight for height and the shot-putt. The light events are running, cycling and jumps. Then come demonstrations of skill such as Highland dancing and solo piping, with tug o' war at a number of games. The page notes that some of the equipment still comes from everyday Highland life, describing the caber as a Scots pine trunk shorn of its branches.[2]

VisitScotland's Highland games page adds that each games has a ceremonial chieftain who leads the proceedings and opens the games. It describes the games as held in towns and villages across Scotland from late spring to early autumn, beginning in May, peaking in July and August and finishing in September, with most on a Saturday or Sunday.[3] The association's own wording is mid-May to mid-September.[2]

Who governs them

The Royal Scottish Highland Games Association, whose patron is the King, says its representatives attend member events to ensure the rules are observed and to confirm any records set. Its member list runs from Aberdeen and Aboyne to Tomintoul, and includes affiliated games in France, Australia, Canada, the United States and Germany. VisitScotland's page links to it under a slightly different name, the "Scottish Royal Highland Games Association"; the association's own site uses Royal Scottish Highland Games Association.[3][1]

Anyone hoping to compete rather than watch should note the association's rule that athletes in the heavy or light field events register with it in advance.[2]

Where the games came from: tradition, stated as tradition

The sources are careful about early history, and so is XTOUR. The association's visitors page opens with "Tradition has it" and "Some say": that clan chieftains used competitions to choose bodyguards, fighters, runners for carrying messages across the hills, and musicians and dancers for their households.[2] VisitScotland writes that "some believe" the games go back to the eleventh century, to a race near Braemar organised by King Malcolm III.[3] The Braemar Gathering's own pages state the link more firmly, saying there have been gatherings at Braemar since the days of King Malcolm Canmore over nine hundred years ago.[5]

On the nineteenth century VisitScotland says the games had largely fallen into decline by the 1800s and that Queen Victoria helped revive the tradition after granting the Braemar Gathering Royal Patronage.[3] The Braemar pages describe the royal grant in different terms: Royal status given by Queen Victoria in 1866 to the Braemar Highland Society, which ran the Gathering. They do not use the phrase "Royal Patronage".[6][5]

The Braemar Gathering: who runs it

The Gathering's organiser is the Braemar Royal Highland Charity. Its About page says the Braemar Highland Society, founded as the Braemar Wright Society in July 1815 and granted Royal status in 1866, traditionally ran the Gathering, and in 2002 set up the charity as a wholly owned subsidiary to organise it.[5] The society's own timeline says it began awarding prizes at the Gathering in 1832 and organised it from then on.[7]

The history page gives a precise starting point. On 20 July 1832, at a general meeting in Braemar Castle, the society decided to give £5 from its funds as prizes for competitions on 23 August; the first time the minutes called the competitions "Games" was ten years later.[6] The society's timeline adds that the first Gathering in what is now the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park was in 1906, which was also the first year spectators paid for admission.[7]

Where the organiser's pages disagree. Three differences are worth knowing, because each is easy to repeat wrongly:

• Royal attendance. The history page says the Gathering has been visited regularly by a reigning monarch since 1832.[6] The home and About pages say regular royal attendance dates from 1848, when Queen Victoria attended; the society's timeline records that 1848 visit as being at Invercauld House.[7][5][4]
• The society's age. The About and History pages call it the oldest surviving Friendly Society in the UK.[6][5] The society's own page says it is one of the oldest Friendly Societies in Scotland and that Scottish Widows, also formed in 1815, matches it in longevity.[7]
• Ticket dates. The top of the home page and the tickets page give 1 February 2027 as the on-sale date for the 2027 Gathering, while a lower section of the home page still reads "Tickets on sale 1st November, 2024".[8][4]

The Gathering's pages also describe its scale in superlatives; XTOUR does not repeat or rank them.

The Braemar Gathering: tickets and the day, as the organiser describes them

According to the Braemar Gathering's tickets page, seated tickets are in ringside sections or a covered grandstand and include general admission, while general admission tickets are not seated; tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable, and if the Gathering is cancelled they roll over to the following year. Groups of eight or more book by email.[8]

The competitions page says all competitions are held under the society's regulations and lists heavy events, massed pipe bands, solo piping, a tug of war and medley relay for services teams, Highland dancing, track events and a hill race. It also shows how the organiser's calendar runs ahead of itself: when XTOUR read it, it was headed "Competitions for 2026" while giving the 2027 dates on which entries open.[9]

The home page and the FAQ both publish the day's timings, which XTOUR does not repeat; the FAQ says the times of individual competitions are in the games book on the day. Both pages describe massed band parades from the Invercauld Arms Hotel and from Auchendryne Square.[4] The FAQ also says dogs other than guide dogs are not allowed, and that the Highland Games Pavilion is closed for a private event on Gathering day.[10] The About page describes the pavilion as the charity's visitor centre, opened in 2019.[5]

Braemar is not one of XTOUR's destinations. The Gathering's visitors page covers getting there by road and bus;[12] XTOUR publishes no travel times.

Highland games as living heritage

The Inventories of Living Heritage in the UK site, which says the UK joined in supporting the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2024 and is setting up inventories as part of this, names Highland games among its examples of living heritage, alongside bell-ringing, cèilidh and Eisteddfod. Its home page said, when XTOUR read it, that 2025 was the first year of accepting submissions and that the inventories did not yet contain anything.[13] An example on a welcome page is not an inventory listing, and XTOUR found no published inventory on 11 October 2026; how the four inventories work, and how the official pages describe their state, is explained in the UK's living heritage inventories. VisitScotland's page describes Highland dancers competing in traditional tartan attire;[3] what the official tartan register is and does is explained in the Scottish Register of Tartans.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR did not research games other than Braemar, and it does not publish ticket prices, schedules, accessibility, parking or crowd information for any games. The association's events calendar and each games' own website carry their dates; for 2027, the association's home page said dates would be loaded as they came in from members, which might take until the end of December 2026.[11] See the United Kingdom country page for the wider picture.