Renowned Scottish music festival launches programme as headliners announced

This year’s CELTIC CONNECTIONS programme has been announced with details of some of the top artists in the process of finalising their appearances, and they include Lyle Lovett, the American tune writer and KT Tunstall, the Scottish indie-rock.

Celtic Connections is an annual, eighteen day winter music festival for the Celtic music scene in Glasgow featuring the best of artists.

This year’s festival will begin on January 16, with what is being called “A Night of Mystery” featuring a concert about the music history of this city.

Some 300 concerts are planned for the duration of the Celtic music festival with over 1200 performers expected to take to the stage with musicians from 20 different countries.

The event’s organisers expect around 110,000 people to attend the event and ask them to provide artists with a welcome warm enough to heat the chilliest of evenings.

Acoustic, traditional, Americana, orchestral, indie, jazz, blues, experimental – festival 2025 will offer attendees a taste of music genres from all of that charter.

According to the organisers of the festival, the event will see performers reach their ‘peak’ moments by staging shows that might be the pinnacle of artists’ careers and features musicians sharing the stage for the first time.

Donald Shaw of Celtic Connections as the creative producer noted that the festival will advise Glasgow as the place to be from 16th January to 2nd February.

He said: ‘I am immensely pleased that CF has been acknowledged as the nurturing ground for new music and art that is Celtic.” In 2025 we find players with potentially huge careers alongside local talent for memorable defining performances and new pairing of acts, not to mention some cracking good evenings out for the punters.

This festival has transformed from a local festival that was mainly held in Glasgow, to a national one and to an international events flagship. Like many acts on our line up, we come from the old tradition and have grown in size and concept to take in the new world of sound and rhythm.

“But however and wherever we grow, Glasgow stays in our soul, so to kick off this festival for our city’s creative muscle is very special indeed. Audiences should be prepared to be given some secrets and we do hope that the first night brings some good vibes to the whole vibe of the whole festival.

20 years ago traditional music got mainstream, it’s promoted in our pubs and great halls, and once again we will lead the artistic consumption of traditional music, its appeal, profile and the possible in our 2025 artistic programs. If you want assurance that you couldn’t be in rationally warmer surroundings and complacent listening environments – try Glasgow in January… However, you have apparently never been to Celtic Connections.

Sporting arenas are also not where first-timers will get their fix of gigs: the Peat and Diesel folk band will be the first to rock the Emirates Arena.

Of the headline acts the four time Grammy award winner will perform and will be at the Royal Concert Hall as will be singer Tunstall, who will be playing the same venue in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of her debut album Eye to the Telescope.

The awarded Best Folk Album at the 2023 Grammys Madison Cunningham is also going to perform at the Pavilion Theatre.

Karine Polwart (above) will be the main artist for the Royal Concert Hall for a concert with 300-members, all choristers from different parts of Scotland.

Other shows include a Glasgow indie-pop group The Bluebells , Breabach – a folk band in the collaboration of with Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and the Cameroonian world music star Abi Sampa .

An under-26s pass is also being released because young fans will also be given a chance to buy tickets with rolling offers for shows in the Barrowland Ballroom, SWG3, at Saint Luke’s, The Old Fruitmarket and other places too.

Creative Scotland’s head of music, Alan Morrison said: ‘If there is something to anticipate when darkness sets in as a rule it is the fact that the tickets to the next Celtic Connections will be on sale.

Even a brief glance at the greatest hits of what is on offer at the 2025 edition is enough to ascertain why this has become one of the world’s largest winter music festivals. Local talent rise to great heights along side amazing international artists, while a world beat infuses our own local rhythms. Creative Scotland is delighted to be funding such rich brew of fabulous music.

Culture Secretary Angus Robertson said: Celtic Connections builds on its worldwide profile as one of the premier festivals in Scotland and an occasion for which we are happy to offer our backing, established in 1994 as a celebration, with friends, of World Wide Folk, Roots, and significant music in general.

‘This year for the first time, the world artists, traditions and audiences melt into one as they celebrate the festival. It goes from strength to strength, adding something extraordinary to the musical and cultural agendas of all involved, and it’s impressive to know what is on offer in Glasgow.