Up Helly Aa 2028
Dates taking place: expected 25th January 2028 (exact date to be confirmed)
Location: Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland
Some events you attend once and consider the experience complete. Up Helly Aa 2028 is not one of those. It is the kind of event that people come back to — not because they missed something the first time but because standing in the January dark in Lerwick watching a Viking longship burn while a thousand men in Norse costume hold flaming torches around it is an experience that improves with the knowledge of what is coming and somehow still manages to exceed expectations anyway.
The longship will be built again. It will take months, be extraordinary and it will be burned.
The Galley
A new galley every year. Built by a dedicated squad of Shetlanders over months — the dragon prow, the shields along the sides, the craftsmanship that produces a genuinely beautiful object specifically so that it can be destroyed in January in front of several thousand people in the dark.
It sounds extravagant, it is extravagant and it is also exactly right. The expenditure of effort and skill and time in service of a single night of fire that connects Shetland to its Norse heritage in a way that no museum exhibit or heritage panel has ever managed and never will. The burning is not the end of the galley. It is the point of the galley. The months of building exist for this. The crowd in the January dark exists for this. Everything exists for the moment the torches are thrown and the longship takes.
First-timers watch it happen and go quiet. Returning visitors watch it happen and go quiet. The quiet is the same both times. That is either the mark of a great tradition or very good fire. Most likely both.
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The Guizer Jarl and the Squads
The Guizer Jarl of 2028 has been chosen. Has probably been planning this for years — the costume, the squad, the culmination of a lifetime's involvement in Up Helly Aa that the role represents. The Jarl leads the procession through Lerwick at the head of his squad in the finest Viking costume on the island, which is saying something given the competition.
Behind the Jarl, the other squads — over a thousand men in costume, torches lit, moving through Lerwick in the January dark in a procession that takes time and builds and builds and builds. The costumes range from full Norse grandeur to the squads' chosen themes.
The procession through Lerwick with a thousand burning torches in the winter dark is one of the most visually extraordinary things available anywhere in the cultural calendar. Photographs of it look enhanced. They are not enhanced. That is simply what it looks like. Being there to confirm this in person is the whole point.
The Night After the Burning
The galley burns. The Guizer Jarl leads his squad around it. The crowd watches from the dark. And then Up Helly Aa continues — because the burning is the centrepiece but not the conclusion.
The halls — community venues across Lerwick — are where the rest of the night happens. Music, dancing, food, drink and the particular atmosphere of a celebration that has never been packaged for outside consumption and carries the quality of the genuine as a result.
Visitors are welcomed. The welcome is real. Shetland is that kind of place.
The night runs late. Late in January in Shetland is very dark and very cold and entirely worth staying up for.
Getting There Is Part of It
Shetland does not make itself easy to reach and has never apologised for this. A flight from Edinburgh, Aberdeen or Inverness — or the overnight ferry from Aberdeen that arrives in Lerwick having crossed the North Sea in the dark.
The island in January is cold and exposed and bracingly remote in the way that only places surrounded by the North Sea at this latitude manage. The landscape is extraordinary regardless — open moorland, dramatic coastlines, the quality of Shetland light even in the depths of winter that rewards those who arrive with their eyes open.
The remoteness matters. Up Helly Aa does not travel. You go to it. The distance and the darkness and the January crossing are the price of admission beyond the ticket and the price is worth paying and everyone who has paid it knows this.
For DMCs and Incentive Planners: Still the One Nobody Has Done
For travel professionals, Up Helly Aa 2028 answers the same question it answered in 2027 and every year before that. The clients who have done everything — the standard European cities, the global highlights, the experiences that appear on every incentive shortlist — and are asking what is left that nobody else has done.
This is what is left. A Viking fire festival on an island in the North Sea. January. A longship built over months and burned in minutes. A thousand men in Norse costume carrying torches through a town that has been doing this since 1881 and intends to keep doing it.
The logistics require early planning .But for the right group the planning is the easy part. The hard part is explaining to clients who didn't come why the ones who did haven't stopped talking about it.
The last Tuesday of January 2028. Lerwick. A longship waiting to be built. Torches waiting to be lit. The North Sea entirely unbothered by any of it.
Some things are worth going to the ends of the earth for. Up Helly Aa 2028 is worth going to Shetland for. Which, in January, amounts to the same thing.
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