A short, curated list of major US Highland Games and pipe band competitions worth knowing about, plus the regional associations that maintain the full schedules.
We are a navigator, not a calendar service. The full schedule lives with the regional associations. What follows is a short list of the games most worth your first weekend.
Closest major piping events on the calendar from late spring into mid-summer. Highland Games, festivals, and solo championships.
EUSPBA-sanctioned games in the Carolina foothills. Solo piping, drumming, and pipe band competitions across grade levels. Friday-night Great Scot Parade in downtown Greenville the evening before.
gallabrae.com →The 40th annual Chicago Scots Scottish Festival and Highland Games, MWPBA-sanctioned, with what the host bills as North America's largest pipe band competition at its center. Two days, solo piping and drumming alongside the band contests.
chicagoscots.org →The largest Scottish festival in Utah, three days of WUSPBA-sanctioned piping and drumming, Highland dance, heavy athletics, and clan tents. A regular stop on the Mountain West games circuit.
utahscots.org →One of the longest-running US solo piping championships, run by the US Piping Foundation. EUSPBA-sanctioned, indoor venue, amateur and professional grades from 8 a.m. through the evening final. Different shape from a Highland Games: this one is about solo piping, not the broader festival.
uspipingfoundation.org →The 70th annual edition of one of the largest Scottish festivals in the United States. EUSPBA-sanctioned piping and drumming on Saturday and Sunday. A clan-tent, mountain- meadow gathering as much as a competition.
gmhg.org →EUSPBA-sanctioned single-day games in western Pennsylvania. Solo piping starts at 9 a.m. by grade level, full pipe bands and drum majors compete through the afternoon, with massed bands at the closing ceremony.
ligonierhighlandgames.org →Long-running outdoor games and major piping championships where bagpipes are central to the event. Listed in calendar order. There are dozens more regionally; these are the ones whose names everyone in the piping world recognizes.
Single-day EUSPBA-sanctioned games in the Carolina foothills with a Friday-night Great Scot Parade in downtown Greenville. Solo piping, drumming, and pipe band competitions across grade levels.
gallabrae.com →The 40th annual Chicago Scots Scottish Festival and Highland Games, two days over Friday and Saturday in mid-June. MWPBA-sanctioned, with what the host bills as North America's largest pipe band competition at its center, plus solo piping and drumming, Highland dance, and clan tents.
chicagoscots.org →The largest Scottish festival in Utah, three days at the Utah State Fairpark in Salt Lake City. WUSPBA-sanctioned piping and drumming competition, Highland dance, heavy athletics, and clan tents. A regular stop for top Highland Games athletes from around the world.
utahscots.org →One of the longest-running US solo piping championships, hosted by the US Piping Foundation. EUSPBA-sanctioned, indoor venue, amateur and professional grades all day into the evening final. Worth knowing about as the calendar-year counterpart to the outdoor games on this page: same world, different shape.
uspipingfoundation.org →One of the largest Scottish festivals in the United States, four days at MacRae Meadows on Grandfather Mountain. Pipers travel from around the world to compete at every level from beginner to professional, with the EUSPBA-sanctioned competition spread across Saturday and Sunday.
gmhg.org →A long-running single-day event in western Pennsylvania, EUSPBA-sanctioned. Solo piping at 9 a.m. by grade level, pipe bands and drum majors through the afternoon, massed bands at the closing ceremony.
ligonierhighlandgames.org →Labor Day weekend at the Waukesha County Expo Center. MWPBA-sanctioned Champion Supreme contest with amateur solo, quartet, and band competitions, set within the broader Wisconsin Highland Games festival. Friday-night opening ceremonies and ceilidh, Saturday solo and band competition, Sunday a full festival day.
wisconsinscottish.org →The largest Scottish gathering in the western United States, run by the Caledonian Club of San Francisco over Labor Day weekend. WUSPBA-sanctioned piping and drumming alongside athletics, dance, and clan tents.
thescottishgames.com →The 51st annual edition. A three-day mountain-resort festival with EUSPBA-sanctioned piping and drumming, a very large clan presence, and one of the most scenic backdrops on the games calendar. Easy day trip from Boston.
nhscot.org →The 54th annual edition, traditionally the third weekend in October. A well-attended Southeastern games with EUSPBA-sanctioned piping and drumming, Highland dance, athletics, and Scottish harp and fiddle competitions.
smhg.org →
Glasgow Green, Scotland. Friday and Saturday, August 14 and 15, 2026. Two days of competition with around 8,000 pipers and drummers taking part. The championship at the top of the piping world, run by the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association.
Most US pipers will never compete here, and that's fine. But if you can get to Glasgow on a mid-August weekend even as a spectator, it is the experience nothing else on this calendar can match.
rspba.org →For the full contest schedule in your region, the regional associations are the source of truth. They sanction the competitions, publish the rules, and keep the calendars current. Find your region below.
The Eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida and inland to roughly the Mississippi. Largest of the three US associations by member count. Sanctions most of the games on this page. The "Compete" tab on their site lists the full sanctioned event calendar.
euspba.org/compete →The American West. Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, and the Mountain states. Split into a Northern Branch (Northern California and Northern Nevada) and a Southern Branch. Maintains a contest calendar across both branches plus its own AGM and championship weekends.
wuspba.org/events →The American Midwest. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Arkansas. Sanctions contests across the region and hosts Winter Storm Weekend in Kansas City each January, a major indoor competition and concert event.
mwpba.org/contests-2026 →The continental umbrella. Ties together the three US associations above plus six Canadian associations (Alberta, Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, Ontario, Prairie Manitoba, and Saskatchewan). Useful if you are crossing the border or are unsure which US region applies to your address.
anapba.org →The major games above are a starter list, not a directory. There are dozens of regional Highland Games and Celtic festivals across the United States every year, plus St. Patrick's Day parades, Tartan Day events in early April, local Caledonian society gatherings, and pub crawl performances that never make the association calendars at all. If you want to find every event near you, the regional associations are step one. Local Scottish or Irish cultural societies are step two.
We have also intentionally left out indoor solo piping competitions hosted by individual schools and colleges, mini- band contests, and most one-off concerts. That layer of the calendar moves too fast for a static page like this one to stay current. The pipes|drums events feed and Bagpipe News both keep up better than we can.
The dates above were verified in late April 2026. If you are reading this much later and the dates look off, treat the official site links as the source of truth, not us.
Highland games, contests, concerts, pipe-band gatherings -- if you know one we missed or got wrong, tell us. We refresh this page periodically.
Date-rot is the curse of an events page. Suggestions like yours are how we keep this list current.