Official tartan for Glasgow Commonwealth Games revealed

National World

Scottish designer Siobhan Mackenzie designs the official tartan for Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2026

Transcript

00:00A Tartan for 74 nations, woven for one city.

00:07Tartan is world-renowned. Season after season, you see it all over the high fashion catwalks,

00:18whether that brand has a tie to Scotland or not, and how lucky are we to call it ours.

00:22So, with the Games coming to Glasgow, we absolutely need to have our very own Glasgow 2026 Tartan

00:27that is a trademark of the Games, but also of Glasgow as a city.

00:35I'm really excited to sign the Tartan for Glasgow 2026.

00:38Many people may not know this, but when I finished my degree in 2014, the Games were in Glasgow,

00:44and I worked as a tailoring technician for the technical officials of the Games,

00:49which made me fall in love with the energy of the Games and what it brought to the city,

00:53and it was really only a pout dream that I could ever imagine getting to design for a Commonwealth Games.

01:07When it came to designing the Tartan, including the number of nations and territories,

01:11what was really important is that the Tartan needs to be an inclusive piece

01:14that welcomes all of the countries to our beautiful country of Scotland.

01:22When approaching the design for the Glasgow 2026 Tartan,

01:25I wanted to create a Tartan that was completely unique to the Games and that also represented Glasgow.

01:31I looked at Glasgow's rich shipbuilding history and picked out some steel grey tongs to work with

01:37for the initial designs of the Tartan and used that as the base of the Tartan.

01:42We went for the lighter grey for the final Tartan,

01:45which I think is a beautiful palette and background for it to let the colours pop.

01:50And the grey section is actually a 74 thread count,

01:53which represents the nations and territories that will be involved in Glasgow 2026.

01:58And our blue section here is actually 26 thread count,

02:03which represents the Glasgow 2026 Games, the year it's going to be held.

02:08I work with colour quite finely within my Tartan designs.

02:11And if you look at my historic Tartan designs, that's the way I would typically design.

02:15So I feel like this represents my brand very well, but it represents Glasgow 2026 well too.

02:20I took the steel grey colour palette as a homage to Glasgow's shipbuilding history.

02:31And it's really important for me to be able to represent Glasgow within this design as the host city.

02:37The turquoise, pink, purple and blue are all pulled from the Glasgow 2026 branding colour palette.

02:44So it felt like a really nice way to incorporate that into the Tartan

02:49and create that brand aesthetic within a Tartan.

02:532022 was such an honour to design for Team Scotland,

02:56to see my country walk out into the stadium and everything I designed.

02:59And to have the games back in Glasgow is just so special.

03:03And I'm incredibly thrilled to be involved.

03:07It's a very proud feeling to know my design is going to end up all over the world

03:12when people come to Glasgow and they go back to their respective countries.

03:15And there'll be a legacy and a part of the games that they can keep forever.

03:18They'll be around the rest of their time they can keep forever.

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