Glenfiddich a go as in-person and online tickets now available

The 49th running of the Glenfiddich Invitational Solo Piping Championship is scheduled to be held on October 29th at Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Scotland, with 10 of the world’s elite Highland pipers strutting their stuff before critical panels of judges and an enthusiastic in-person and online audience.

Tickets are now on sale for the competition, plus a limited number of passes to the Pipers’ Ceilidh in the evening.

In-person tickets to attend the event at the castle’s Great Hall are £15 (£12 concession) and pay-per-view access to the competition is also priced at £15. You can get a package to attend both the contest and the ceilidh for £75 adult (£72 concession).

The ceilidh for the first time moves to the host Atholl Palace Hotel in Pitlochry, a classic Victorian Highland lodge with spectacular autumn Highland views.

During the pandemic, with most other qualifying events cancelled, the Glenfiddich used various other methods to choose the nine other invitees other than the previous year’s winner. The 2022 Glenfiddich will return to inviting the winners of the following competitions from the previous 11 months, joining 2021 Glenfiddich Champion Jack Lee of Surrey, British Columbia:

• 2021 Bratach Gorm, Scottish Piping Society of London’s competitions
• 2021 Aggregate Champion, Scottish Piping Society of London’s competitions
• Piping Live! Masters Champion
• Argyllshire Gathering Senior Piobaireachd
• Argyllshire Gathering Former Winners MSR
• Argyllshire Gathering Highland Society of London Gold Medal
• Northern Meeting Clasp
• Northern Meeting Silver Star Former Winners MSR
• Northern Meeting Highland Society of London Gold Medal

In the event that a piper wins more than one of those events, there’s a pecking order of contests where the second-prize winner gets an invitation.

The competition is sponsored by the William Grant Foundation and run by the National Piping Centre. The event was the brainchild of Seumas MacNeill, first held in 1974 and originally called the Grant’s Invitational Solo Piping Championship.