Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) has announced the full programme for its 22nd edition, with GFF26 running from 25 February until 8 March. The festival will host 126 films across 12 days, including 16 World, European and International premieres, 68 UK premieres, and 18 Scottish premieres, with titles from 44 countries and six continents.
GFF is Scotland’s flagship film festival and is run by Glasgow Film, a charity which also runs Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT). The festival is made possible by support from Screen Scotland and the BFI Audience Projects Fund, both awarding National Lottery funding, and Glasgow Life, the charity which delivers culture, events and active living in Glasgow.
Scottish films will open and close the festival, with the UK premiere of BAFTA-winner Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, executive produced by Emma Thompson, about one of Scotland’s most high-profile acts of civil resistance in recent memory, kicking off GFF26 on 25 February.
Closing the festival on 8 March is the UK premiere of James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin', based on the improbable true story of Scottish rap duo Silibil N’ Brains, a.k.a. Gavin Bain (Séamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley).
As well as Hollywood blockbusters, the festival highlights early-career filmmakers, with 42 titles on the programme being a director’s first or second feature. Glasgow Film Festival 2026 (GFF26) will also showcase 50 foreign language films, with 44 languages being represented in the lineup.
This year’s festival marks Paul Gallagher’s first edition as Head of Programme, working alongside Programme Manager Chris Kumar and a team of Programme Advisors who bring additional specialist insight across key areas of the programme. The advisors include Sam Fraser, with a focus on World Cinema; Lauren Clarke, contributing expertise in Documentary; Heather Bradshaw, bringing a specialism in Animation; and Neha Apsara, whose focus is South Asian Cinema.
Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) will remain as the venue at the heart of the event, with screenings also taking place at ODEON Luxe Glasgow Quay as well as special events happening across the city at Glasgow University Union, Glasgow Women’s Library, and the Pyramid at Anderston.
Scotland on Screen
The spotlight will be on Scottish cinema this year at the country’s biggest film festival, with 13 Scottish films being showcased. A selection of established and new Scottish talent will feature on the big screen alongside opening and closing films.
Scottish films having their world premiere at GFF26 include Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People), Jack Archer’s documentary about Scotland’s cultural heritage of traditional Gaelic psalm singing. Additionally, Welcome to G-Town is the debut feature from identical twin brothers Ben McQuaid and Nathan McQuaid, which follows shape-shifting aliens that have landed in Glasgow.
Made outside the traditional filmmaking pathways, this is the perfect film to see in a cinema with a local audience. Marc Silver’s documentary, Molly vs THE MACHINES, will also have its world premiere at the festival, with nationwide screenings also happening concurrently. The story of a heartbroken father’s quest to uncover the truth behind his daughter's death and his fightback against how the most powerful corporations of the modern age operate, the film is distributed by Scottish production company Cosmic Cat and received significant funding from Screen Scotland.
FrightFest, GFF’s resident horror festival, will also open with the world premiere of Vasily Chuprina’s relentless, high-stakes action thriller Jailbroken, a claustrophobic pressure-cooker set entirely within a single prison cell.
Other Scottish films having their UK premieres include Edinburgh filmmaker Sean Dunn's hotly anticipated debut, The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford. Shot on location in Edinburgh and Balerno, and featuring Gayle Rankin, this black comedy stars Peter Mullan as a local history-fixated tour guide who descends into madness as a big-budget fantasy TV show takes over his small town.
Iranian-Scottish co-production, Without Permission, by Aberdeen-based British-Iranian director Hassan Nazer, is an intelligent docufiction hybrid about an exiled filmmaker who returns to Iran to shoot a film.
Filmed primarily in and around Glasgow, Midwinter Break is a touching drama, based on a novel by the same name by Bernard MacLaverty, about a retired married couple who live in Glasgow (played by Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds), who find themselves reflecting on the past and considering their future while on an Amsterdam getaway.
Partially shot in Glasgow and Perthshire, My Father's Island spotlights the relationship between a 13-year-old (Woody Norman) and his father (played by Swann Arlaud), as they spend a year together on a remote Nordic island.
Films with ties to Scotland that will have their Scottish premiere at the festival include several standouts. Documentary Super Nature, shot collaboratively across 25 different countries, offers a fresh way of looking at the environment and creatures great and small around us via the glorious and tactile intimacy of vintage Super 8 cameras. Filmmakers based in Oban, Isle of Lewis and Edinburgh are among those who contributed to the film, which also saw partnership from Screen Scotland, co-production from Scottish studio Forest of Black, and co-executive production from Glasgow-based Nikki Parrott of Tigerlily Two.
Raoul Peck’s documentary, Orwell: 2+2=5, braids together George Orwell’s biography and the writing of his final book, 1984, on Jura, and features an exploration of its ideas, including doublethink, Big Brother and newspeak, which resonate more than ever today. Completing the selection is The Son and the Sea, shot on location primarily in the Scottish village of Pennan, which sees two best mates travel from London to the northern Aberdeenshire coast.
World and International Premieres
Set against the wide open landscapes of North Wales is Effi o Blaenau, a Welsh language film adaptation of Gary Owen’s much lauded and widely performed monodrama, Iphigenia in Splott.
The festival will also showcase the world premiere of Sinsin and the Mouse, a sensitive and elegantly shot drama that accompanies a young woman, reeling from the death of her mother, on a trip to Taipei, where an encounter with a young man begins to help her break through her grief; and the international premiere of Steal Away, a psychosexual fairy tale set in an alternate reality, where a Congolese woman’s warm welcome into a grand mansion, owned by the mother of a white woman her own age, slowly reveals a far more unsettling desire beneath its surface.
UK and Scottish Premieres
With 68 UK premieres at GFF26, there will be a wide array of Hollywood stars gracing Glasgow’s big screens, while many more stars of the big screen will appear in the 18 Scottish premieres at the festival.
Documentaries
This year’s festival will host the premieres of 15 documentaries, exploring topics from war, geopolitics and social issues, to legendary Hollywood directors and the worlds of rugby and bull riding.
GFF26 Audience Award
Glasgow Film Festival’s longest-running award returns this year and will be given to an exceptional first or second-time director. As always, the award is chosen by the most important people: the GFF audience.
The 10-strong shortlist of films from across the world, which will all have UK premieres at the festival, includes eight first-time directors, six of whom are women.
Special Events
GFF's special event screenings return, turning some of Glasgow's most eye-catching venues into unique one-off pop-up cinemas. Last year, Toni Colette surprised GFF audiences by dancing to ABBA at the Muriel's Wedding special event at Cottiers - who knows what surprises are lined up for GFF26? These are always a festival hot ticket!
Marilyn Monroe 100
GFF26 will celebrate the life and work of Marilyn Monroe 100 years after her birth, screening a selection of her films, with tickets priced at only £7. These will include The Asphalt Jungle (1950), her first movie to garner widespread attention; iconic crime comedy Some Like It Hot (1959); the hit musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); psychological thriller Don't Bother to Knock (1952); and British romantic comedy The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), screening on 35mm.
Retrospective - ‘Truth to Power’
As part of GFF’s commitment to Cinema For All, audiences can start each day of the festival with a free screening of a classic film as part of the retrospective programme. The theme for 2026 is ‘Truth to Power’, featuring 10 films from the 1930s to 2014 that stand as statements of resistance or feature characters who resist systems of power.
Community and Youth Takeovers
This year introduces GFF’s first film club, which is ticketed on a sliding scale, with a series of three feminist discussion events inspired by Carrie, Moulin Rouge!, and Born in Flames (which will all be screened at the festival). These sessions will be facilitated by Dr Hannah Granberry, an academic in Film Studies who specialises in nostalgia, horror and cultural studies. With relevant archive material from Glasgow Women’s Library available during the sessions, audiences are invited to engage with the film festival in a discursive format, encouraging wider reading and questions around the films.
Glasgow Film Festival Community Takeover Day will be a free, fun-filled cinema event, created with and for communities around Glasgow. Residents will be invited to attend a Community Planning Meet-Up to select the film, food and activities for the wider community to enjoy.
The Glasgow Film Young Ambassadors will also host the Glasgow Film Festival Youth Takeover, a free pop-up cinema event with activities and food for under-25s, all selected by the Young Ambassadors.
The full programme will be available on the Glasgow Film Festival website.
Tickets for the full programme go on sale to GFT CineCard / CineCard+ holders at 10am on Friday 23 January, and on general public sale at 10am on Monday 26 January.
Tickets will be on sale online from glasgowfilm.org and at GFT Box Office (12 Rose Street, Glasgow - 0141 332 6535).
Paul Gallagher, Head of Programme at Glasgow Film Festival, said: “It is an absolute honour and privilege to unveil my first Glasgow Film Festival programme for this 22nd edition of the festival. Across these 126 features are stories of vastly differing characters, settings and ideas, but one thing connects them: they are all the result of a personal vision, uniquely brought to the screen.
“I’m particularly pleased at the depth and variety of films in this programme that were made here in Scotland or by Scottish talent; it speaks so highly of the great filmmakers we have, and the increasing opportunities they are taking and creating for themselves. I can’t wait to showcase theirs and so many other brilliant filmmakers’ work to the greatest cinema audience in the world!”
Isabel Davis, Executive Director of Screen Scotland, said: “The Scottish films reflect a year of fearless, ingenious and entertaining work, from first-time filmmakers to those making a second, third or fourth film here in Scotland. These films sit alongside world-class cinema in a programme that remains as welcoming and audience-focused as ever.
“Screen Scotland is GFF’s major funding partner because the festival champions strong, locally originated work alongside its international programme, and is becoming a significant date in the industry calendar. All of which contributes to our creative and economic growth.”
Ben Luxford, Director of UK-wide Audiences at the BFI, said: "We’re so pleased to be supporting the Glasgow Film Festival with BFI National Lottery funding. We wish Paul Gallagher all the best in his first year as Head of Programme, and we're excited to see that the team has once again delivered a thrilling and packed line-up which will screen at an even wider range of venues across the city. See you in Glasgow!"
Bailie Annette Christie, Chair of Glasgow Life, said: “Glasgow Film Festival is a much-loved part of our city’s cultural life, bringing people together through a shared love of film. From the powerful opening film, Everybody to Kenmure Street, this 12-day programme delivers first-class cinema throughout.
“The festival offers a wonderful mix of modern and retrospective screenings across a wide range of genres, while placing Scottish filmmaking centre stage. Glasgow Life is proud to support a festival that champions new voices, attracts global talent, and firmly places Glasgow on the international film map.”
More information
Image credits
Header image: Still from Midwinter Break courtesy of Protagonist Pictures;
First image: Still from The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford credit Saskia Coulson;
Second image: Still from Super Nature courtesy of Forest of Black.