PROGRAMME
2023
Welcome to the 33rd Festival!
And join us in orbit around the Sun! We’ve an incredible new centrepiece this year, in the heart of Orkney, St Magnus Cathedral. You can enjoy the stillness amongst the warm red sandstone, and a concert blending ethereal electronic music with voices and instruments.
Elsewhere there are talks on the Northern Lights and the science of the Sun, and stories of new frontiers in photonics and robotics and many other subjects. You can walk with archaeologists at Brodgar or Stenness or hear of a walk to the South Pole. There’s music, with a legendary western group and stories of science in the Old West, and this year art and dance and history meet mathematics. There’s ancient grains and a lost flock, ultra-running and violin making, and new horizons in energy and transport.
There’s much information here about the various events, and tickets are now on sale. You can also read about some of the topics and speakers in our online magazine Frontiers.
Ticket information and more

Tickets are now on sale, and can be accessed direct from individual events or from the links on the Tickets page or elsewhere.
Regular updates are continuing in our social media – on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Some of the events and speakers also appear in features in our online magazine, Frontiers.
If you’ve visited before and want to recall some highlights, or if you’re coming fresh and want to find out more about the Festival atmosphere, then there’s an opportunity to look back at events from 2020, 2021 and 2022 which you can access on our YouTube channel. You can also find more about our background and highlights of past festivals, and see more of Orkney itself.
And we have a new and unusual competition! It’s to travel on a celestial odyssey, travelling outwards from the Sun to the planets of the Solar System, one by one. You start with the Sun in St Magnus Cathedral, and then look for Mercury, Venus and so on. Each planet is hosted by a well-known local business, with each location having clues to the next one.
There are details here too of our schools programme, with primary and secondary sections.