13 highlights of 2025 in Scottish arts and events - Oasis, Celtic Connections & Mary, Queen of Scots

An t-Eilean (The Island), BBC ALBA, January

The Outer Hebrides provide the spectacular backdrops to a major new Scottish murder mystery series - and the most ambitious drama series so far on Gaelic language channel BBC Alba.

Sagar Radia and Sorcha Groundsell star in the new BBC murder mystery series An t-Eilean/The Island. Picture: Black Camel Pictures/BBCAlba/John Maher | Black Camel Pictures/BBCAlba/John Maher

Sorcha Groundsell leads the cast of the thriller, playing a police family liaison officer who returns to her home island as part of an investigation into a brutal murder in a family castle.

Sorcha Groundsell leads the cast of the new BBC murder mystery series An t-Eilean/The Island. | The Island 3 Black Camel Pictures/BBCAlbaJohn Maher

Amhuinnsuidhe Castle, on the Isle of Harris, provides the main location for the drama, which sees the four adult children of self-made millionaire Sir Douglas MacLean return home after their mother Mary is killed.

The show, which has a budget of more than £1 million per episode, was made in Harris, Lewis and Glasgow by Black Camel Pictures, the producers of the marine murder mystery series Annika, and the Bafta Scotland-winning queer love story Float.

Iain Glen and Martin Compston will be returning in the new series of the Prime Video supernatural thriller The Rig. | Amazon Prime Video

The Rig, Prime Video, January

The first series of David Macpherson's supernatural thriller The Rig set the crew of a North Sea oil rig cut off from mainland Scotland and caught up in a series of deadly and mysterious events.

The second series begins with the surviving crew being taken to a secret offshore facility buried deep in the Arctic Circle, where new dangers await.

Emily Hampshire and Iain Glen will be returning in the second series of The Rig. | Amazon Prime Video

Iain Glen, Martin Compston, Emily Hampshire, Stuart McQuarrie, Rochenda Sandall, Owen Teale, Mark Addy and Molly Vevers will be among the stars of the first series to return, alongside newcomers Ross Anderson, Alice Krige, Phil McKee, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Johannes Roaldsen Fürst.

The new series of the show, which was again made at FirstStage Studios in Leith Docks, will explore "global themes about the past, present and future of the planet".

Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival has been running since 1994. | Kris Kesiak

Celtic Connections, Glasgow, January.

Glasgow has pledged a year-long celebration to mark its 850th "birthday" and the festivals will get underway in style with the launch of the city's long-running winter music festival.

The official curtain raiser will be the festival's opening concert, which will feature music, spoken word, dance and film, as well as a mix of specially commissioned performances, emerging stars and special guests.

The biggest show in the festival's line-up will be staged at the Emirates Arena, where Hebridean rockers Peat and Diesel will perform the first major live music at the sports complex in the city's east end.

Other highlights of the festival include a double-header of shows from KT Tunstall, as well as appearances from Lyle Lovett, Madison Cunningham, The Bluebells, Lady Blackbird, Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis.

Joanna Santos plays Aurora in Laura Carreira’s debut feature film On Falling, which will get its Scottish premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival in March. | Sixteen Films

Glasgow Film Festival, March

It will be the end of one era and the beginning of another when Glasgow Film Festival red carpets are rolled out again.

The 21st edition of what is now firmly established as Scotland's biggest celebration of cinema will also be the swansong programme for long-time director Allison Gardner, who is also bowing out as chief executive of the Glasgow Film Theatre, the festival's much-loved base.

The 2025 programme will feature a "coming-of-age" strand including Gregory's Girl, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, This Is England, Boyz N the Hood and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

New films include the Scottish premiere of Edinburgh-based filmmaker Laura Carreira's acclaimed debut feature, which follows the struggles of a young Portuguese immigrant working in a vast factory in Scotland.

Special screenings of romantic comedy Muriel's Wedding and teenage horror The Craft will be staged at Oran Mor, while the Grand Ole Opry, Glasgow's famous country and western club, will host a screening of the musical comedy Coyote Ugly.

Dawn Sievewright will star as Glaswegian country singer Rose-Lynn Harlan in the new stage musical Wild Rose. | Matt Crockett/Louise Richardson

Wild Rose, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, March-April.

Writer Nicole Taylor has already scored a huge hit with her feature film about a fresh-out-of-prison country singer's dreams of leaving Glasgow behind for a new life in Nashville.

The Glasgow-born writer is joining forces with John Tiffany, the director of National Theatre of Scotland hits Black Watch, Let The Right One In and The Bacchae, to turn Wild Rose into a new stage show.

Dawn Sievewright, whose best known stage shows include Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, No Love Songs and My Left/Right Foot, has been cast alongside Taggart star Blythe Duff in the production, which will be premiered at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh.

The show will feature cover versions of hits by a host of country stars, including Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Wynonna Judd, Chris Stapleton, Caitlyn Smith, The Chicks and Patty Griffin.

The 1980s Scottish comedy Restless Natives is set to be turned into a stage musical in 2025.

Restless Natives: The Musical, on tour around Scotland, April-June

Exactly 40 years since the release of the classic Scottish comedy, the story of two Highland Highwaymen who decide to target coach-loads of tourists is being turned into a stage musical.

Key collaborators on the feature film, including writer Ninian Dunnett, director Michael Hoffman, producer Andy Pater and the Scottish rock band Big Country, are all involved in the stage show. which will premiere at Perth Theatre.

The story will follow the exploits of The Clown and The Wolfman, two teenagers who become unlikely folk heroes as they are pursued by the police and their fame grows. The production will premiere in Perth before heading off on tour around Scotland, including confirmed dates so far in Stirling, Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow.

Martin Green's stage show Keli will bring the worlds of brass band music and theatre together. Picture: Sandy Butler | Sandy Butler/National Theatre of Scotland

Keli, on tour around Scotland, May-June

Folk musician Martin Green has developed a number of projects celebrating brass band music since he stumbled across an event at the Scottish Mining Museum near his home in Midlothian.

The latest of these will see Green, who has been playing accordion with the trio Lau for nearly 20 years, join forces with the National Theatre of Scotland to launch his first stage play.

Focusing on a talented, but troubled young horn player, Keli will explore the relationship between former mining towns and brass band music. It has evolved from Green's radio play inspired by his own BBC Radio 4 series Love, Spit and Valve, which featured encounters with bass band players across the UK.

The Whitburn Band will be reviving a collaboration with Green for the show, which will tour Scotland to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the miners' strikes.

Edinburgh's Hidden Door festival will be staging a five-day event at its new venue, The Paper Factory, in June. | Stevie Powers/Hidden Door

Hidden Door, The Paper Factory, Edinburgh, June

Hidden Door has been an increasingly important part of the cultural life of Scotland's capital since its first events were staged at the Roxy Art House in the south side in 2010.

Unusual and used spaces used since then have included historic vaults on Market Street, a hidden courtyard on Kings' Stables Road, the former State Cinema in Leith, the old Royal High School on Calton Hill and the former Scottish Widows building on Dalkeith Road.

Its latest site is not only the biggest Hidden Door has used to date, but will allow the festival to move in over an extended period for the first time.

It was announced in September the former Saica paper and cardboard manufacturing plant in the Maybury area had been secured until the end of 2025.

After a two-day launch event in November, the countdown is on until the first full-scale festival, while Hidden Door will also be using the venue's warehouses, factory floors, offices and outhouses for studios, workshops and rehearsal spaces throughout the year.

The musical of the Bay City Rollers is set to inspire a new stage musical in 2025. | Getty Images

Rollers Forever, Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, August

Half a century on from their first number one hits in the UK and the United States, the songs of the Bay City Rollers will be taking stage in a new musical.

All of the band’s best-known hits are expected to feature in Rollers Forever, which leading music and theatre producers are joining forces to launch.

Long-time Roller Stuart ‘Woody’ Wood, who leads the current incarnation of the band, is involved with the show, instigated by musician, songwriter, manager and producer John McLaughlin, who was behind the short-lived Rollers' reunion in 2015.

The new stage show will focus on two life-long Rollers fans who meet to relive their teenage years and their efforts to meet Edinburgh’s tartan-clad teen sensations.

Oasis will be making a return to the BT Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh in 2025. | National World

Oasis, BT Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, August.

It has been more than 15 years since the Mancunian rockers last performed live.

They will be returning to the scene of their last show in Scotland, at the home of Scottish rugby, with three sold-out dates which will smash the new stadium box office record set by Taylor Swift's double-header last summer.

The shows will mark something of a homecoming for the band, who were famously discovered by Creation Records boss Alan McGee at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow in 1993.

The band was one of the hottest acts in the UK when they appeared at the first T in the Park festival in Lanarkshire the following summer and within two hours were headlining two huge outdoor concerts at Balloch Country Park, on the banks of Loch Lomond.

Scottish Ballet's new production Mary, Queen of Scots will be premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in August. Picture: Gavin Smart/Scottish Ballet | Gavin Smart/Scottish Ballet

Mary, Queen of Scots, touring across Scotland, August-October

Although the Edinburgh International Festival is not due to announce its 2025 programme until March, a few tantalising elements of director Nicola Benedetti's next programme have emerged.

An obvious stand-out is the world premiere of a new Scottish Ballet production that will explore an imagined relationship between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.

Swedish dancer and choreographer Charlotta Öfverholm has been confirmed as a special guest who will be joining the company to play Elizabeth I in her later years.

Other key collaborators included the Broadway and West End set and costume designer Soutra Gilmour, composers Mikael Karlsson and Michael P Atkinson, who worked on Scottish Ballet's recent hit production of Coppélia, and the company's choreographer-in-residence, Sophie Laplane.

Singer and composer Ricky Ross and playwright Frances Poet are collaborating on the stage show Small Acts of Love, which explores the bonds of friendship formed since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan/Citizens Theatre

Small Acts of Love, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, September

The historic theatre in the Gorbals area will reopen after a seven-year hiatus with a new look, after a £40 million revamp, and a major new production.

Playwright Frances Poet and Deacon Blue singer Ricky Ross have joined forces to create a show that will explore the real-life bonds formed between the people of Lockerbie and the American relatives of victims of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.

The production, which has been in development for four years and will span more than three decades, has emerged from painstaking research and interviews with families and individuals directly impacted by the bombing.

A cast of 14 actor-singers and a five-piece band will bring their stories to life in a show that will be directed by Dominic Hill, the reborn theatre's artistic director.

Uma Nada-Rajah has written the NHS-inspired play Black Hole Sign. | Kirsty Anderson

Black Hole Sign, Tron Theatre, Glasgow and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, September-October

Uma Nada-Rajah, who juggles playwriting with a nursing career, will be exploring the realities of the modern healthcare system in her new dark NHS comedy.

Set in a run-down and under-staffed accident and emergency department, Black Hole Sign will focus on three generations of nurses "doing their best to stay afloat against a crumbling system, which seems stacked against them".

Part of the National Theatre of Scotland's 2025 programme, the script has been drawn from interviews with real-life nurses, porters and patients, as well as the writer's own experiences of the NHS.

Nada-Rajah's play is said to take a "razor-sharp scalpel to the absurdities, tragedies and hilarity within one of our most beloved, but besieged, institutions".