Edinburgh hosts the New Year’s Eve celebration known as Hogmanay, featuring a torchlight procession and street party.
Edinburgh’s Hogmanay is a multi-day festival centered on the arrival of the Scottish New Year. Its best-known events have included a torchlight procession, a large city-center street party, concerts, and fireworks viewed against Edinburgh Castle. The combination of historic architecture and mass participation has made the festival internationally recognizable.
The Scots word Hogmanay refers to New Year’s Eve and the associated celebration. Scotland developed especially strong New Year traditions, partly because Christmas was historically observed less prominently in some Scottish communities after the Reformation. Modern Edinburgh Hogmanay, however, is a professionally organized festival with programmed events and ticketing.
The exact route, performers, capacity, and event schedule may change. Edinburgh is the canonical answer for the famous festival, but other Scottish towns also use the word Hogmanay for their own local celebrations.