The Strathaven Balloon Festival began when a group of us from Strathaven thought it would be good to generate an exciting public event within the town, to help the local economy; complementing our already successful Gala, our Agricultural Exposition and our Christmas Spectacular. A hot air balloon festival was suggested and, as one of us happened to know Don Cameron of Cameron Balloons, the largest manufacturer of balloons in the world and designers of the Breitling Orbiter, the world’s first Round-The-World balloon, this seemed the ideal choice.

Don Cameron was extremely helpful from the start and went out of his way to encourage and help us. With a lot of meetings and a great deal of work, we managed to get the Strathaven Balloon Festival off the ground. It has been running since 1999

The Strathaven Balloon Festival Committee is a non-profit voluntary organisation and works hard to raise money to cover the costs of the annual festival. We take pride in giving Strathaven this colourful spectacular each year. Our only regret is that we cannot control the weather!