‘Haggis’ toss, Scottish eats and music at the Highland Games
By Chelsea Spear
listings@hippopress.com
If the Tartan Army’s New England takeover was the highlight of your summer, you’re in luck. The New Hampshire Highland Games and Festival returns to Loon Mountain from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20. Now in its 51st year, the festival features heavy athletics, pipe bands, ceilidh dancing and sheepdog trials.
The Highland Games and Festival had an unassuming start in 1975.
“It was a clan picnic for those first couple years, and then just over the course became kind of a larger and larger thing,” program director Andrew MacLeay said in a recent Zoom interview. “It grew from strength to strength year to year. And now we’re up to close to 45,000 people over the three days.”
One of the main attractions for the festival is heavy lifting, which MacLeay describes as “the traditional big people lifting heavy things sort of stuff. The one that most people know is the caber toss, so that’s that large telephone pole, tree trunk essentially that people are tossing around. They also throw various implements for distance, throw a big giant bale of hay over a high bar, that sort of thing.”
The heavy lifting component of the festival inspired a new attraction for 2026.
“We’re doing a stone lifting competition, breaking that out from our heavy athletics,” MacLeay says. “People are going to lift, I believe, a 300-pound stone as many times as they can over their shoulder in five minutes. That will be a big show of strength and a nice test.”
Live music will also be a major component of the festival. Local favorites like the McCarroll Sisters, who first became popular through fiddle competitions, and Cassie and Maggie, a Cape Breton duo who have performed at folk music venues throughout New Hampshire, will be performing at the event. Several fife and drum bands, some from Scotland or the Canadian maritimes, will also be present.
NHSCOT, the parent organization for the Highland Games and Festival, will be offering Try It activities. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to ceilidh dance, how to play the harp, how to curl or how to speak Scottish Gaelic, this is your opportunity. The festival will also host more in-depth programs about genealogy and Scottish cooking, if you’d like a deeper dive on those topics.
Those who’d like to sample traditional Scottish cuisine are also in luck. While there’s no build-your-own haggis booth, delicacies like Scottish eggs and meat pies will be available for purchase. If you want to play with your food, the festival offers an unusual activity for that as well.
“We do a ‘haggis’ toss,” MacLeay says with a laugh. “It’s a faux haggis, so that’s a fun competition in our Parade Square on Friday afternoon so people can chuck a bag of mystery meat back and forth at each other.” The festival will also be offering a whiskey and spirits tasting on Friday night and a traditional Cape Breton dinner for an additional cost.
While the Tartan Army has returned to Scotland, MacLeay is looking forward to an increased interest in Scottish culture after the World Cup.
“We’re definitely going to have some traffic cones around,” he laughs, referencing the ubiquitous symbol of the raucous soccer club. “We certainly have just received some calls from people who just heard about our festival or looked it up through having the Tartan Army down in Boston in the region. It’s great to see what we already kind of know in the Scottish cultural community, what we stand for and what we bring to the party.”
New Hampshire Highland Games and Festival
When: Friday, Sept. 18, through Sunday, Sept. 20
Where: Loon Mountain Resort, Lincoln
Tickets and program schedule: Visit nhscot.org. Weekend passes $116.26 for age 15+, $13.04 for children, free for toddlers, at the website. Single-day and single-event tickets are also available. Separate tickets are required for some events.
Featured photo: Multicultural Festival. Courtesy photo.