Glenfiddich confirmed for 2022 and beyond

Contrary to reports that the 2021 Glenfiddich Solo Piping Championships could be the last year for the event, organizers have confirmed to pipes|drums that the world’s most prestigious piping contest will in fact be staged for years to come.

“All things being equal, there will be a 2022 Glenfiddich Championship and beyond,” said Corrie Campbell, director of Innes & Campbell Communications, the agency responsible for media relations around the event.

Following several reports from sources that the 2021 Glenfiddich could be the last, inquiries were made to ascertain whether the competition was in fact planned for subsequent years.

“There is no veracity to [the rumours],” Campbell categorically stated, affirming that the event held in the Great Hall of Blair Castle in Blair Atholl, Scotland, is on solid ground.

The 2021 competition will be held live on October 30th and accessible in a pay-per-view live streamed broadcast.

The Glenfiddich was started in 1974 as part of William Grant & Sons distillers’ patriarch Sandy Grant Gordon’s vision to support Scottish culture and, in particular, piping. Using his own resources, Grant Gordon set out to sponsor and create various piping events, with the centrepiece being the Glenfiddich, originally named the Grant’s Solo Piping Championship.

A humble and shy man, Sandy Grant Gordon was a major contributor to the establishment of the National Piping Centre in Glasgow, seeking nothing in return except for the naming of a room in honour of his uncle, the piping historian Francis Collinson.

Grant Gordon died in 2020. The management of sponsorships was transferred to the William Grant Foundation, the official charitable arm of the family-run distillers, apparently leading some to speculate that the sponsorship of piping events might change.

pipes|drums sat down with Sandy Grant Gordon for a wide-ranging interview on his life and commitment to piping in 2015. The organization is by far history’s greatest financial sponsor of piping events and organizations.

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