Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games – Opening Ceremony
A hundred thousand welcomes, built by the city itself
The Commonwealth Games nearly didn't happen. Glasgow decided they would.
Glasgow’s oldest belief is that its people are its greatest asset. For one night in July, we just gave that belief a stage.
We were asked to open the Games at The Hydro on 23 July, in front of King Charles and Queen Camilla, broadcast live around the world.
The brief, in effect: make a Games nobody expected to happen feel unmistakably like Glasgow.
One theme kept surfacing before we wrote a single scene: courage. Not the dramatic kind, the kind that shows up when a city says yes to something uncertain.
We ran workshops across Glasgow, gathering more than 1,000 real voices and stories. Those conversations shaped everything that followed.
The stage was built from the same belief: single knotted thread of light, designed by Amalie White. At its centre grew a living garden of 2,400 plants that began as Scotland’s own and became the Commonwealth’s once all 74 nations had planted their own Baton within it.
It opened on the King and Queen stepping out of a TARDIS onto that garden. From there: a piper’s single note conjured the Loch Ness Monster from the water, and Outlander star Sam Heughan coaxes her out to hum a song the whole arena finishes.
Then we told the story across a single day, because that’s where Glasgow’s character actually lives: the Glasgow Central Station Clock, the city’s best-understood meeting point, wakes the city for Beat of the Community, as Nathan Evans and the Saint PHNX Band turn the station into a flash mob.
Workshop of the World carries a Gaelic banner across the stage: Tha Glaschu beò anns na daoine, People Make Glasgow, the same belief the whole night was built on.
Night falls with This Toon’s Electric, sparkly unicorns and Callum Beattie’s Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, as the Clock itself spins into a kaleidoscope.
"One theme kept coming back to us: courage. The courage of a city that stepped forward when the Games needed a home. The courage to embrace difference, to reinvent, to reimagine."
Roxana Cole, Show Director, and Tim Elliott, Artistic Director and CEO
In the closing number, each Guide pulls a Teacake from their pocket as a giant Teacake descends from the ceiling in a burst of pyrotechnics, and the full cast returns for one last chorus.
“The remarkable team at People, whose creativity, bravery and relentless commitment to authenticity have never wavered,” is how Louisa Mahon put it afterwards.
We’ll take that.
View the full team credits here