Overview The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games is a four-day Scottish gathering on MacRae Meadows in Linville, North Carolina, which the Games call the largest gathering of Scottish family societies in the world: 108 family societies took part in 2025. Competition runs across heavy athletics, USATF-sanctioned track and field, Highland dance, piping and drumming, fiddle, Celtic harp and Gaelic song, and the Saturday Highland dance program is the Atlantic International Championship for Premier dancers. The 70th annual Games ran July 9-12, 2026. A nonprofit runs the Games, and its mission includes scholarships for Avery County High School students. On site Thursday evening opens the Games. The meadow opens at 4 p.m., people spread blankets on the ground, and after dark the Torchlight Ceremony raises the clans: a representative of each clan and family carries a torch in from the points of the compass to form a saltire cross while the pipes play. Through the weekend, clan tents line clan row beside the competition field, the Scottish Cultural Village and a Gaelic ceilidh tent, merchant stalls and campsites. Shona O'Kane works her Border Collies on sheep and ducks between demonstrations. The Parade of Tartans and the Kirkin' of the Tartans close the weekend. Audience Much of the crowd arrives by clan. Family societies staff their own tents, carry their torches into the Thursday ceremony and walk in the Parade of Tartans, and the Games give family societies first placement on clan row because, in its own words, clan relationships are the most important it has. Competitors travel in: the 2026 winners came from Colorado Springs, Madison, Mississippi and Gilmer, Texas. The Games run their own campground for people who stay the whole weekend. Talent and Influencers Kyle Lillie, the 2025 U.S. National Highland Games champion and an assistant track coach at the U.S. Air Force Academy, won the 2026 men's heavy athletics in his first trip to Grandfather Mountain, taking the stone, the caber and the 56-pound weight for height; he pulled three 12 o'clocks on the caber in pouring rain. Dee McGillivray won four of seven events to take the women's title. The women's elite heavy athletics field competes by invitation. Larry Long created the Torchlight Ceremony. Track record Agnes MacRae Morton and Donald F. MacDonald held the first Games on August 19, 1956: one day, two bands, a small group of competitions and about 1,500 people. It grew into the four-day event that marked its 70th edition in 2026. Clan row had 154 tent spaces for the 2026 Games. Brand presence Glenmorangie presents the Games' whisky tastings: a two-hour Thursday session at The Lodge at Banner Elk pouring the Glenmorangie and Ardbeg lines with smoked meat, then shorter tastings on the field on Friday and Saturday. Sponsors and patrons are invited to a reception with the Games' honored and distinguished guests, and patron packages run in four levels, from Chieftain and Highlander to Clansman and Lowlander.