A Belter of a Line-Up: Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival 2026 Programme Now Live!
Welcome to this year's exciting new GDODF 2026 Programme packed full of more than 150 free events taking place across Glasgow from 17–20 September. With some special pre-festival events happening on 16 September too!
This year’s programme is packed with exclusive building openings, family-friendly events, walking tours and heritage experiences, inviting you to step or wheel inside the places that made Glasgow.
Discover iconic buildings, hidden heritage and remarkable stories, alongside theatres, music venues, cinemas, places of worship, factories, artists’ studios, architecture practices, museums, community spaces, gardens, industrial landmarks, historic homes, breweries, castles, creative hubs and much-loved local favourites. The programme also offers rare opportunities to explore places, venues and spaces not usually open to the public.
To help you plan your festival visit, our new What’s On page lets you explore the programme by category, date, area of the city or keyword. You can browse via nine event categories, including building tours, talks, walking tours, performances, family-friendly activities, workshops, exhibitions, outdoor events and film screenings, and see at a glance whether each event is drop-in or needs to be booked in advance.
This year’s festival theme, Glasgow Goes Out: The Places That Made Us, celebrates the venues, dancehalls, cinemas, theatres, pubs, music spaces, community landmarks and everyday gathering places where generations of Glaswegians have come together.
Programme highlights include behind-the-scenes tours at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, backstage access at SWG3, tours of the Tron Theatre, events at the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, visits to Timorous Beasties Print Room, The Shed and One Devonshire Gardens by Hotel du Vin, and the chance to step inside Pollok Stables and the Sawmill Living Heritage Centre as it is transformed into a net-zero living heritage centre.
The Festival also explores Glasgow’s night-time culture, with events including Glasgow’s Lost Nightclubs Walking Tour, the Barrowlands to Broomielaw Night-Time Walking Tour, and Lost Glasgow’s Ye dancin’? talk at the ARC Festival Hub — an illustrated waltz through the city’s lost and forgotten dancehalls, nightclubs and discos. A Twilight Tour at Kelvin Hall will invite visitors to explore objects and artworks from The Hunterian collection, considering how houses for art lovers offered vibrant, if often exclusive, spaces for entertaining and fostering creative and social exchange. There will also be more exciting talks linked to Glasgow’s entertainment and going-out history as part of the wider Talks Programme at our Festival Hub at the ARC, University of Glasgow. The full GDODF Talks Programme will be announced via the festival’s website on Monday 10 August, with bookings opening the same day.
You might be interested in
Discover Glasgow’s Cinema City at Edward House
New for 2026, Edward House becomes our Mini-GDODF Festival Hub, celebrating Glasgow’s historic cinemas through exhibitions, talks, screenings and artwork, presented with the Sauchiehall Street: Culture and Heritage District team. The programme explores Glasgow’s early 20th-century history as a “Cinema City”, when it had over 130 cinemas — more than any other city in Britain.
Thomas McGoran Exhibition:
Experience the work of acclaimed Glasgow artist and former cinema projectionist Thomas McGoran in this special festival exhibition featuring prints, sketches and digital images of McGoran’s richly detailed artworks, offering a nostalgic glimpse into Glasgow’s cinemas, streets and everyday life.
Festival Talks Programme 2026 Now Live!
The Talks Programme is now live for bookings! Get ready for a vibrant programme of talks celebrating Glasgow’s lost and forgotten dancehalls, nightclubs and discos, bringing their stories, characters and cultural histories back to life. The programme also features three very special GBPT fundraising talks too!