The Scalloway Fire Festival is held on the second Friday of January, a date fixed in 1984, and is the first of the Viking-themed fire festivals of the Shetland winter, three weeks before Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa. The 2026 festival on 9 January was led by Guizer Jarl Sidney Nicolson with a squad of more than sixty guizers; the next is on Friday 8 January 2027, and the rule gives 14 January 2028.
The guizers gather with their torches at Lovers Loan at the top of the village. Once the torches are lit the procession moves down through the streets — New Street, Main Street and the West Shore — to Port Arthur and the Scalloway Boating Club slipway, where the torches are thrown into the galley. Unlike Lerwick, Scalloway burns its galley on the water: the blazing boat is set adrift into the bay, and a fireworks display follows. The squads then board a fleet of buses and tour six halls in Scalloway and on the neighbouring island of Burra, performing their acts in each in turn until the small hours; a hop night follows on the Saturday and the Guizers’ Return the weekend after. Men and women both take part, some squads are mixed, and women can be members of the Jarl Squad.
Fire festivals in Scalloway go back to the turn of the 20th century, when they were held on Christmas Day; the event took the name Scalloway Fire Festival in 1979 and moved to its January Friday in 1984. Scalloway was Shetland’s capital until the 17th century, and the roofless castle of Earl Patrick Stewart (1600) overlooks the harbour where the galley burns.
Watching the procession and the burning is free and open to anyone; the hall tickets afterwards sell out well in advance and are largely in local hands. Scalloway is 10 km west of Lerwick by road, with buses; visitors reach Shetland by the overnight NorthLink ferry from Aberdeen or by air to Sumburgh, and January accommodation should be booked early because Up Helly Aa (last Tuesday of January) fills Lerwick soon after.
