Ticket buying hints and tips 2026

Membership Numbers

To purchase members' tickets, you will need to enter the membership number(s) received in your confirmation email. If you did not receive an order confirmation email from us after completing membership payment, please use this form to access your details. If you still haven't received an email from us, it is essential that you check your spam folder prior to contacting us.

Please note that when purchasing members tickets, there is a ticket price for adults aged 18 and over and a ticket price for children under the age of 18. No other concession price tickets are available.

What's Changed?

There's a couple of big changes this year that you may have noticed if you purchased early membership.

We are no longer using paper tickets for our festival concerts - all tickets are now e-tickets. These are a QR code / number and are provided to you in a couple of ways. On your order confirmation email you will see two buttons:

• View Online: This button takes you to an exclusive area on our website where you can see all the orders, tickets and memberships associated with the email address used for the order. From here you can download printable (PDF) versions of your tickets, by order or by concert.
• View Download: This button takes you to a PDF which contains all the tickets purchased in your order.

The links are valid until the end of the festival, but we recommend downloading the PDF to your device for your own safe-keeping, or taking screenshots. If taking screenshots, make sure you capture both the QR code and the number below it.

You may also have noticed that we are no longer providing PayPal as a payment method. All order payments must be made by Credit/Debit card through the Stripe payment gateway.

Join the Queue!

As we have done in previous years, we have put a queuing system in place for the opening of the members' ticket sales.

When you visit www.shetlandfolkfestival.com/tickets to buy your tickets at 6pm on Monday 16th, you'll automatically be placed in the queue. You don't need to do anything else - when it is your turn to access the booking system, you'll be automatically redirected to the booking page, and will be able to purchase your tickets.

To manage website traffic we will also be opening the "pre-queue" 15 minutes before the ticket sales open. This means you can visit the link below after 5:45pm on Monday to automatically join the "pre-queue":

Join the Queue

Joining the pre-queue before ticket sales open at 6pm doesn't guarantee a position in the queue - all users in the pre-queue at 6pm will be placed in the queue at random. This means that there's no difference between joining at 5:45pm or joining at 5:59pm.

Notes

Thursday Concerts

• A maximum of one evening concert ticket will be allocated to each membership number.

Friday Concerts

• A maximum of one afternoon concert ticket, one evening concert ticket and one Festival Club Late ticket will be allocated to each membership number.
• The Festival Club Lates will have doors opening at 10.30pm for music commencing around 11.15pm. The music and bar will close by 02.00am and the building must be cleared by 03.00am.
• Folk Festival Members aged 14 and over may attend the Festival Club Late but only if accompanied by an Adult Member. The ticketing system will not allow the sale of under 18 tickets for Festival Club Lates without an Adult member also buying tickets.

Saturday Concerts

• A maximum of one afternoon concert ticket, one evening concert ticket and one Club Late ticket will be allocated to each membership number. This years Saturday Legion concert is being classed as an evening concert and not as a Late concert. Only Folk Festival members will be able to purchase tickets for the Club Late.
• We expect at least one child ticket to be included in ticket orders for the Peerie Spang family concert.

Sunday Concerts

• A maximum of one afternoon concert ticket and one evening concert ticket will be allocated to each membership number.

Tickets issued by the Shetland Folk Festival Society are non-transferable and non-refundable. We reserve the right to alter concert line-ups as circumstances may dictate.

Tips

• Have your membership numbers ready!
• Once a member has been checked, you can quickly autofill their details by selecting their name.
• Some concerts may sell out very quickly. If purchasing for a large group, you may wish to prioritise the tickets you want to purchase, and make separate orders if necessary.
• A £1.50 processing charge is added to all orders.
• Once you have clicked the "Proceed to Payment" button and have been taken to Stripe to make your payment, DO NOT CLICK THE BACK BUTTON. The details you entered previously will no longer be populating the order form.
• Once you have clicked the "Proceed to Payment" button, your tickets will be allocated to your basket in the system, although won't be confirmed until after payment has been made. If your payment fails, or you decide to cancel, you will be unable to re-purchase those same tickets for 15 minutes. This is to prevent overselling, so make sure you check your selected tickets carefully, and complete your purchase at the payment stage. On ticket launch day, please , get in touch with us on Facebook, or call us on +44 (0) 1595 694757 and we can manually remove your pending order for you.

Thank you for your patience in reading this lengthy email and we hope that your ticket buying experience is a smooth one.

Kind regards,

Shetland Folk Festival Society