Glory to Glen Scotia!
The Campbeltown Malts Festival 2026 is not your standard whisky festival. Forget a giant expo hall or corporate waffle about “liquid luxury”. This is a small harbour town on the edge of the Kintyre peninsula that reminds you that whisky is a working industry and not a lifestyle accessory. Three distilleries (more are on the way!) sit within walking distance of each other and for the festival the warehouse doors are flung open.
Half the conversations happen with a dram in one hand and sea air in your face. It’s rougher around the edges than most whisky events, which is precisely why people love it. Getting there takes effort. Accommodation disappears quickly. The weather will probably do something annoying. But the payoff is one of the most rewarding weeks in whisky. You’re tasting drams where they were made, often with the people who made them standing nearby. There’s very little distance between the whisky and the town that shaped it. Just Campbeltown doing what Campbeltown does best.
And with another Campbeltown Malts Festival comes another Campbeltown Malts Festival bottling! The annual limited-edition whiskies from Glen Scotia are always a welcome addition to our Glencairn glasses, and 2026 is no different. The casks for this one were selected to pay homage to historic trading routes, when barrels of fortified wines would line the peninsula's shores. Port-to-port history has never tasted so good.
Glen Scotia 7 Year Old
Medium Peated - Ruby Port Finish
Festival Release 2026
The 2026 Festival Whisky is a medium peated single malt aged initially in first-fill bourbon barrels and then finished in ruby Port casks for six months. After a total of seven years ageing, it was bottled at 53.9% ABV with no chill-filtration or additional colour. Expect all that rich, smoky maritime Campbeltown character plus a healthy dose of red fruit and cinnamon Port sweetness.
Running from 18 to 23 May, the week works more like a build-your-own adventure than a neatly packaged festival. Glen Scotia Distillery offers a more structured programme of tastings, tours, and warehouse sessions. Expect warehouse tastings, open day drams, blending sessions, rare bottles, and queues full of whisky obsessives discussing refill hogsheads before breakfast.
The Glen Scotia Double Cask Range
Want to bring the festival to you? There's no better way than with a few bottles of Campbeltown whisky to compare and contrast and feast upon. The Double Cask range offers ample opportunity, with a trio of terrific single malts boasting secondary maturation in casks ranging from sherry to Bourdeaux red wine and Guyanese Demarara rum barrels.
Watch the video below for an in-depth intro to the classic Double Cask whisky. Two casks are better than one!
Explore Campbeltown Further
Shop the rest of the Glen Scotia range here, from the outstanding value 12 Year Old to the extraordinary 21 Year Old.
