Heartland Festival organiser hopes to become 'mini Glastonbury for Scotland'

The organiser of Pitlochry’s Heartland Festival dreams of it growing to become a “mini Glastonbury for Scotland”.

Ticket sales for this year’s festival are up 40% on last year’s, which – while generating £1.8 million for the local economy – is expected to operate at a loss for the second year running.

Organiser Graham Howie had not planned on running the festival for a second year – after losing so much last year – but agreed after festival-goers pleaded for the “best festival” to be repeated.

The festival director made the revelation as he presented the public entertainment licensing application for Heartland Festival 2025 to Perth and Kinross Licensing Committee on Monday, May 12. It is due to take place at Pitlochry’s Recreation Ground from June 28 to 29.

Skerryvore, Kyle Falconer, Torridon and Nathan Evans and the St Phx Band are among the headline acts due to perform.

Councillors unanimously granted a public entertainment licence for this year’s festival.

But Cllr Keith Allan challenged Mr Howie on running the festival at a financial loss.

Mr Howie said: “In years to come, I think there’s a capacity there to bring the event up to 10,000, but if you go over that, you start to lose the community feel.

“If you get the ticket pricing right, there’s no reason that the festival could be profitable. We have a little advertising this year. We haven’t been able to get a sponsor, so that’s one of my key tasks for August onwards to try and find someone who will sponsor us, without us losing our integrity. It’s a difficult call, but I believe it’s achievable.

“The ticketing is a very difficult balance. I priced the early bird tickets too cheaply last year. They were £34 for the weekend, so we sold a lot – but it’s come back to bite me now because the demand was clearly there. I think if we had sold them at £45/50 – bearing in mind that was half the price – we would have sold the same amount.

“I want to keep the prices low as it is a family event but it is a commercial event. If I don’t make money, then I can’t invest in it and grow it.”

Presenting the application to councillors, Heartland Festival Ltd owner Mr Howie said “the response from the community and the public was absolutely overwhelming” following last year’s inaugural event.

He added: “One of the biggest compliments we got was that ‘it didn’t feel like a first-time event, it felt like an event that had been running for years and years’.

“I wasn’t actually planning to do a second festival because I lost so much money on the first one but that’s my loss and my loss to take.

“It became clear from the response on Facebook and with emails from people asking if we wanted to do this again. We actually put a post on Facebook asking that very question and – within 20 minutes – we had 300 replies saying ‘please run the festival again – it’s the best festival we ever went to’.

“It will still make a small loss this year, but nothing like the amount of money that was lost the previous year. I’d hope that for 2026 and 2027 we’ll be into a small profit and then be able to grow it accordingly in conjunction with normal business practices.”

He cited a Scottish Government document which showed “a benefit of £1.8 million coming into the local economy this year”.

He added: “Ticket sales for 2025 are 40 per cent up on 2024. We’re now expecting in the region of 5000 people on Saturday and nearer 7000 on Sunday so it’s a huge improvement on the previous year and shows the popularity of the event.

“Support from the community is even higher in numbers and stronger than it was the previous year and I’m very grateful to all the volunteers that help us put on the event.”

The family-friendly festival is free to children under the age of 13. Teenagers are admitted half-price. There is even a dedicated children’s area.

There is no camping on site but this year there will be shuttle buses running to four local campsites – Grandtully Station Campsite, Aberfeldy Caravan Park, Faskally Caravan Park and Blair Castle Caravan Park.

In addition, there will be a link-up with FlixBus and Citylink which connect the Highland Perthshire village to Scotland’s major cities. The festival will finish an hour earlier at 10pm – rather than 11pm – to “minimise disturbance” and allow revellers to leave by bus.

The festival’s exclusively all-Scottish line-up may however move towards being “predominantly Scottish”.

Mr Howie said: “I don’t know for how long we can keep it exclusively Scottish acts because we’re starting to run out already but it will always be a predominantly Scottish act festival.”

New and unknown acts can gain exposure on the Discovery Stage. Heartland Festival will then promote two of the best Discovery Stage acts to the Main Stage. This year sees last year’s Discovery Stage acts David Delinquent and the IOUs as well as Copper Lungs take to the Main Stage.

In terms of refreshments, organisers have teamed up with local brewers Wasted Degrees as well as local food vendors and a local gin company.

Councillors were assured a “robust traffic management plan” would be in place and – while there will be some traffic restrictions in place to allow traffic to flow – there will be “no road closures”.

The application received just one objection. A neighbouring resident – who lives 25 metres from the venue – raised concerns about noise and disturbance.

An environmental health officer, who was on site throughout last year’s event, said there were “no breaches” and the team received “no complaints”.

She added: “I spoke to a number of neighbours around about and I think most of them were at the festival.”

Appealing to councillors to grant the licence, Mr Howie said: “I could take this to Stirling or to Dunfermline, but Pitlochry is my home.

“And I hope – with the continued support from the council and volunteers – that we can continue this festival and we can grow it into my dream to be a mini Glastonbury of Scotland for the future.

“I have done everything I possibly can to minimise disturbance to the local community because I am part of that local community.

“If you were going to design a park area to put a festival on, the Recreation Ground is the perfect location.”

The committee’s convener, Highland Perthshire councillor Mike Williamson, moved the application for approval. It was seconded by vice-convener Iain MacPherson and unanimously approved by the committee.