Edinburgh and East Lothian
Doors Open Days 2026

Edinburgh and East Lothian Doors Open Days returns on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026.

Doors Open Day is Scotland’s largest free cultural festival. ‘Doors Open Days’ has grown into Scotland’s largest free heritage festival. Last year, more than 950 venues took part — celebrating Scotland’s people, places and stories — each offering something special to visitors eager to discover the buildings, landscapes, and histories on their doorstep.

Every year, throughout the month of September, Doors Open Day enables free civic access to buildings normally closed to the public. The Scottish Civic Trust coordinates Doors Open Days through a network of regional coordinators with the Cockburn Association responsible for Edinburgh and East Lothian’s festivities.

As the coordinators for Doors Open Days in a region afflicted by over-tourism, we feel it is of vital importance that residents benefit from our rich cultural landscape and reap the health and wellbeing benefits of engagement with the arts. We’re undertaking research in partnership with Santiago di Compostella, and Loughborough (London) Universities to understand the impact of tourism in Edinburgh and highlight the domestic and international case studies of tourism-driven community benefit (thank you to those who joined us for the preliminary findings at the City Chambers on the 12th May as part of the Festival of Europe). We believe that Doors Open Days plays an integral role in achieving the New Economics Foundation’s (NEF’s) Five Ways to Wellbeing.

 

Edinburgh and East Lothian Doors Open Day

Sign Up a Venue to take part in 2026

This year’s theme is Heritage at Risk: Revive, Resist, Reimagine — an invitation to explore how we protect the places we love, adapt buildings to new uses, and respond to the pressures facing historic places today. Taking part in the theme is encouraged, but it’s not required.

Venue Criteria:

There are three criteria which need to be met for a venue to take part, they are:

  • The venue should be open on the region’s designated weekend. For Edinburgh and East Lothian this is the 26th and 27th of September 2026. The venue should be open for a minimum of 2 hours on this weekend.
  • The event must be free.
  • The event should include something different from your usual offerings- common examples include a tour, talk, exhibition, workshop, or a simple colouring activity. You can use our annual theme to design your event/activity- this year’s theme is Heritage at Risk: Revive, Resist, Reimagine.

 

How to Apply:

Please complete a Doors Open Days 2026 Application Form . The deadline has been extended to 5 July 2026. Please return applications to the following email:

📧 EdinburghDoorsOpen@cockburnassociation.org.uk

A detailed Taking Part Guide is available with everything you need to know. The Scottish Civic Trust has also produced lots of resources which you can access here. If you’re not sure whether your venue is suitable, or you just want to talk through an idea — please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

 

Volunteering to Support Doors Open Day

How you can help:

  • We’re currently fundraising to send a Doors Open Day invitation to every Primary School Child in Edinburgh & East Lothian. The estimated cost of this venture is £15k and we need to hit our target by 31st July to ensure ample time for production and distribution. Please donate here.
  • Volunteer for the Cockburn: We’ll be recruiting volunteers to support evaluation, social media, fundraising and venue support. If you’d like to hear more, we made this Google Form for you to register your interest.

National Doors Open Day

Interested in seeing what’s happening across the country for Doors Open Day? Please visit the national page for Doors Open Day and explore all of the possibilities and experiences you could undertake!

 

Your place belongs in this:

Edinburgh and East Lothian are full of extraordinary places — historic and contemporary, grand and humble, famous and completely overlooked. Doors Open Days is your chance to share yours.

Because sometimes opening a door opens much more than a building.

It opens stories. Conversations. Connections. And occasionally, an entirely new way of seeing the place we call home.