What species is the Glasgow 2026 mascot Finnie?

The Glasgow 2026 mascot Finnie is a unicorn.

Finnie is designed as a distinctly Glaswegian unicorn, combining a mythical Scottish symbol with the city’s lively, humorous character. She was unveiled on 22 July 2025, exactly a year before the Games, at the top of the Finnieston Crane on the River Clyde.

Her horn is a playful reference to the traffic cone famously placed on the Duke of Wellington statue outside Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. That local joke is one of Glasgow’s best-known sights, so it gives Finnie a recognisably city-specific identity rather than making her a generic fantasy mascot.

Finnie was developed with input from 76 children representing 24 Glasgow schools. The mascot is sometimes confused with a thistle because the thistle is a national Scottish emblem, but Finnie’s species is explicitly a unicorn. The unicorn also has a long Scottish association: Scotland’s royal coat of arms features the creature as a symbol of strength and pride.