‘It’s Glastonbury on wheels’: bards and musicians flock to eisteddfod to celebrate Welsh culture
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Eisteddfod y Garreg Las runs 1–8 August near Cardigan Castle, the site of the first recorded eisteddfod held by Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd in 1176, featuring more than 1,000 events and an expected 150,000 visitors.
- Creative director Marc Rees built a 5-metre puppet of Lord Rhys that has toured West Wales since being 'awoken' from St David's Cathedral, accompanied by this year's crown and chair prizes and a puppet hunting dog named Teifi.
- Local fundraising committees have raised £400,000 since the 2024 site announcement, and hundreds of volunteers prepared the festival grounds near the village of Llantwd, according to executive committee chair John Davies.
- The Super Furry Animals are among this year's headline acts, with Rees describing the eisteddfod as 'Glastonbury on wheels' that goes 'under the radar in the rest of the UK'.
- Eisteddfod Gorsedd Cymru co-founder Iolo Morganwg, a 'laudanum' user, fabricated much of the tradition's claimed ancient lore and history, yet his inventions live on in the festival's pageantry.
- Crown and chair prizes, awarded for the best free-verse poem, trace directly to Lord Rhys's original gift of a seat at his table to the first winner in 1176.
Why it matters: With £400,000 raised locally and 150,000 visitors expected, the eisteddfod functions as both a cultural anchor and an economic engine for West Wales — and its 850th-year homecoming near Lord Rhys's castle is being used by Welsh-medium families, including a first Welsh school in Tenby opened a decade ago, to demonstrate the language is 'a living, fun thing' rather than a heritage relic.
