Merchant City Festival

Merchant City Festival is set to return this summer. Confirmed to take place between Thursday 8th - Sunday 11th July 2021, the celebrated Glasgow festival will showcase a long weekend of entertainment with outdoor arts, circus, dance and more, brightening up some of Glasgow’s best-loved streets and in venues in and around the Merchant City area of the city.

An Opening Carnival celebration, inspired by Baroque Venetian themes, will open the festival in style on Thursday 8th July with pop-up performances in a variety of places. The full programme will be announced in the following weeks.

The 2021 festival will be slightly different to previous years to ensure compliance with current Public Health guidelines. All events during the festival will continue to be free to attend however due to current restrictions, several of the programmed events will need to be pre-booked online to ensure numbers are managed in the safest way.

To mark the launch of the 2021 edition, Merchant City retailers and restaurants are being invited to apply to the festival’s Get Involved Fund which offers a £500 grant to businesses operating in the area to join in the festival atmosphere and organise some entertainment and cultural activity within or outside their premises during the event.

Premises who are existing licence holders are also being invited to apply to extend their licenced outdoor areas for the duration of the festival so that food and drink provision will be readily available across the festival site. There will be no markets or additional food and drink provisions aside from what is already in operation in the Merchant City this year.

Merchant City Festival will run from Thursday 8th - Sunday 11th July 2021. Programme details to be announced in the coming weeks.