Highland Games in America: Where to Find Them & What to Expect
The first Highland Games on American soil were held in New York in 1836. Today there are more than 200 games and gatherings each year across the United States and Canada - more, by some counts, than Scotland itself hosts.
Which means the odds are good that one runs within a few hours' drive of you, and that you have never heard of it. This is a guide to finding it, and to knowing what you are walking into when you get there.
Three worth planning a trip around
Pleasanton, California - the Scottish Highland Gathering and Games. Run by the Caledonian Club of San Francisco every Labor Day weekend at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. It has been held annually since 1866, surviving the 1906 earthquake, the Great Depression and two world wars; its only interruption came in 2020. It regularly draws well over 30,000 people, and the 150th anniversary in 2015 pushed close to 50,000. If you want the biggest, this is usually it.
Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina. Held each July at Linville since 1956, in a mountain setting that does a convincing impression of the Highlands. Grandfather Mountain's particular claim is the clan gathering: well over 100 clan and family societies set up every year, which organisers describe as the largest such gathering anywhere in the world. If your reason for going is to find your own people, this is the one.
Loon Mountain, New Hampshire - the New Hampshire Highland Games & Festival. Held in September at Lincoln, New England's largest and consistently among the top three in North America, with attendance north of 35,000. It has been running for over half a century.
How to find the one nearest you
There is no single master list, but the closest thing is the Association of Scottish Games and Festivals, which publishes directories both by state and by date. One caveat worth knowing: ASGF lists member organisations only, so a small local games in your county may be missing from it entirely.
Three things that help when you search:
- Season. Most North American games run May through September. The exceptions are worth remembering - Florida and Arizona hold theirs in winter and early spring, when the weather elsewhere would be impossible.
- Vocabulary. Many events are not called "Highland Games" at all. Try "Scottish festival", "Celtic festival", "Scottish gathering" and "Caledonian" alongside your state name.
- Your clan society. If you already know your clan, its American society almost certainly keeps a list of the games it will have a tent at - which is a better list for your purposes than any general directory.
What the day actually looks like
The athletics, the pipe bands and the dancing are the parts everyone pictures, and we have covered how those events work in our guide to what Highland Games are and where they came from. What that guide does not tell you is how an American games runs, which is a little different.
Arrive early. Parking is usually a field, and at the larger games it fills by mid-morning. The opening ceremony - the massed bands, and at many games the calling of the clans - happens early and is the single best hour of the day.
It runs all day, and it is outdoors. Sun, folding chair, water. Mountain venues like Grandfather and Loon can be genuinely cold in the morning and hot by two o'clock.
Clan row is the real heart of it. This is the difference between a Scottish games and an American one. In Scotland the games are a village sports day. In America they are a reunion - rows of tents, each one a clan society, staffed by volunteers who have been researching these families for decades.
Bring what you know about your family. Surnames, the state your people settled in, a grandmother's maiden name. The people in those tents can often do more with that in ten minutes than you will manage in an evening online.
What to wear
You do not need a kilt. Most people at an American games are in jeans, and nobody will look twice. If you are curious about the full kit, our explainer on what a kilt actually is is a good place to start - but it is not the price of admission.
What does change the day is wearing your own tartan in some form. It is a conversation starter at every tent you stop at, and it saves you explaining who you are. A clan tartan T-shirt in your family's sett does the job in August heat without committing you to anything.
For a September games in New England, or an early start anywhere in the mountains, a tartan hoodie is the more practical answer - warm at eight in the morning, tied round your waist by noon. Our guide to styling tartan has more on wearing it without tipping into costume.
Before you go: know which tent to look for
The one thing worth doing in advance is working out which clan tent is yours. Scottish surnames rarely map one-to-one onto clans, and a great many families arrive at a games assuming they have no clan at all when in fact their name sits under a larger one.
Our surname lookup guide will get you to an answer in a few minutes. Walk in knowing the name on the tent, and the day stops being a festival you are watching and starts being one you belong to.
Find your tartan before the next games weekend - browse clan tartan T-shirts and tartan hoodies at Tartan Today, in over 600 authentic clan setts.