Over 130 music events every week.

Glasgow’s great winter music festival brightens the darkest weeks of the year. For a fortnight the city’s concert halls, churches, clubs and back-room bars host folk, roots, traditional and world music from Scotland and all over the globe.

Alongside the headline concerts there are late-night sessions, workshops, ceilidhs and free performances, so you can dip in for one show or spend a whole week following the music around the city.

January is a quiet, affordable time to visit Glasgow, which makes this a perfect excuse for a city break with a self-catering base to come home to after the last encore.

One of the UK’s major film festivals, built around the much-loved Glasgow Film Theatre and a string of pop-up venues across the city.

The programme mixes international premieres, retrospectives and documentaries with the festival’s trademark special events — films screened in unexpected places, with the audience very much part of the show.

Tickets for the bigger screenings go quickly, so plan your stay early if there is something you particularly want to see.

Glaswegians are famous for their sense of humour, so it is no surprise that the city hosts one of the largest comedy festivals in Europe.

Hundreds of shows take place over three weeks in theatres, arenas, pubs and function rooms — big touring names, cult favourites and brand-new acts trying out material in front of one of the sharpest audiences anywhere.

It is a brilliant time to be in the City Centre or the West End, where the bars stay busy long after the shows finish.

Glasgow’s biggest community festival takes over the West End for most of June, centred on Byres Road, Kelvingrove Park and the Botanic Gardens.

Expect a huge parade, outdoor concerts, street parties, walking tours, garden openings and hundreds of small events run by local venues, cafés and residents.

If you want to see the friendly, sociable side of Glasgow at its best, this is the month to book a West End apartment.

A city-centre music festival held on Glasgow Green over a summer weekend, with major international headliners alongside Scottish bands across several stages.

Because it sits right in the middle of the city, there is no camping and no long trek home — you can walk back to your apartment, which is one of the real luxuries of a festival in Glasgow.

The city fills up fast for TRNSMT weekend, so accommodation is worth securing well in advance.

For one week each August Glasgow becomes the piping capital of the world, with performances in concert halls, on street corners and in shopping centres across the city.

The week builds to the World Pipe Band Championships on Glasgow Green, where hundreds of bands from around the globe compete in front of tens of thousands of spectators.

Many of the Piping Live! events are free, which makes it one of the most accessible festivals in the Glasgow calendar.

The old warehouse district turns into an open-air venue for a long weekend of street theatre, live music, markets, comedy and family events.

The Merchant City is the perfect setting: handsome 18th and 19th-century buildings, pedestrianised lanes and more bars and restaurants per square metre than anywhere else in the city.

Stay in the City Centre and the whole festival is on your doorstep.

A chance to get inside the buildings you normally only walk past — City Chambers interiors, Mackintosh landmarks, working churches, theatres, tunnels and townhouses, nearly all of them free to enter.

Glasgow was named UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999, and this is the best week of the year to understand why.

Guided walks and talks run alongside the openings, so it suits both serious architecture enthusiasts and curious first-time visitors.

Scotland does New Year better than anywhere, and Glasgow celebrates it in its own style: live music, street entertainment, fireworks over the city and pubs full of singing.

George Square and the surrounding streets are the traditional focus, with concerts and family events staged across the centre through the 31st and into the New Year.

Having your own kitchen and living room makes Hogmanay far more relaxed — a base to gather in before heading out, and a warm place to come back to.