Heartland team to become a leading Festivals player

Replay Festival will nudge Perthshire group into sector top bracket

The 2026 Replay music event in Perth could see the team behind Pitlochry’s Heartland Festival emerge as one of the leading festival players in Scotland after only three years.

Content to fly below the radar, the trio behind the popular and family-focused Heartland event, have overseen significant strides as a group in only 2 years.

Now with the new Replay Festival in Perth adding to their portfolio, the group could outstrip the long-established Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, by virtue of attendance numbers, by the end of August 2026.

The first 1000 early bird tickets for Replay on Perth’s South Inch (Aug 15th-16th 2026) sold out in under 3 weeks and the group hopes to attract between 5000 and 6000 fans a day in year one in the Fair city, before growing again in 2027.

That would echo their trajectory at Pitlochry’s Heartland Festival which rose from 3500 fans a day in year one to 8500 per day in year two – with an extra evening to be added in 2026.

Big league

Should predictions come to pass, it will nudge the independent group into the higher echelons (over their 2 events), with only DF Concerts’ TRNSMT and Glasgow Life’s Celtic Connections attracting higher audience figures for their showpiece events.

With audience survey data this year showing that Heartland Festival brought in between £2m and £2.5m to the wider Perthshire economy, the introduction of the new festival in Perth is set to bring further community benefits.

“Someone was speaking to me and said: if you could get between 5000 to 10 000 people at Replay, you could be amongst the largest festival groups in Scotland,” said Sales and Marketing Director, Simon Clark.

“I thought about it for a bit and concluded that, yes, we would be in that ballpark - if Replay takes off - but we are not really focussed on that. It was the same with the survey and the economic impact. We’ve not bragged about it because we are not money-focussed in that sense.

“What we really want to concentrate on is making sure we can run two great events, that they go ahead, that everyone has a good time and wants to come back the next year.

“That is the type of people we are. We are family-orientated, we don’t have big egos, and we are transparent as a group. We know what we’ve done but we also know the mistakes we’ve made, too.

“We want to get to the stage where we are bringing even more into Perthshire.”

Live Music recognition

The group’s progress has not gone unnoticed by critics. Heartland Festival (97.6% Scottish, except for Starsailor) has made the longlist for Festival of the Year at the 2025 Scottish Live Music Awards.

Whilst the Pitlochry prototype has become a key event in the Perthshire calendar, and widely acclaimed, Replay promises to be a different beast.

All the logistical strengths, honed and tweaked, will be ported across from Heartland but the offering is entirely new, as Simon explains.

“We really want to keep Heartland as Scottish. That won’t change. When we were thinking about Replay, we felt there was a need to feed that 80s, 90s and noughties nostalgia niche. Other festivals were adding it in with a mix of Scottish, trad and Indie as a kind of amalgam, but we wanted it just to focus on people enjoying a bit of pop and reliving their youth. Someone told me it was the Rewind itch they’ve been dying to scratch. They’ve missed that festival in Perth and they feel the city needs it.”

Fundamentals

Replay’s ‘proof of concept’ was delivered quickly by the people of Perth themselves, in the way they snapped up early bird tickets in good order.

Increased accessibility, frequency of public transport from all over Scotland, and more accommodation will make for a smoother experience for the team.

However, there are certain aspects they won’t budge on, whether in the city or the country.

“Kids will be going free to Replay, just as they do at Heartland. We are not going to be the type of festival that charges for children.”

*Replay Headliners are award-winning Natalie Imbruglia, who has sold over 10m albums, and English boyband, Blue.

To find out more about Replay Festival, and to buy tickets, go to: replayfest.co.uk

To find out more about Heartland Festival, and to buy tickets, go to: heartlandfestival.co.uk