The nonprofit behind Bethlehem's Celtic Classic Highland Games & Festival announced Wednesday that it is shutting down for good, ending a 39-year run that turned a Columbus Day weekend gathering into one of the largest free Celtic festivals in North America. The Celtic Cultural Alliance said years of financial pressure had made continued operations unsustainable, even though the festival just wrapped its 39th and final edition in September.
According to celticfest.org, the alliance issued its announcement from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, framing the closure as the conclusion of operations rather than a pause. Board President Lane Rundle called it an agonizing choice. “This was an incredibly difficult decision,” Rundle said, according to WFMZ. The station reported that the alliance pointed to changing spending habits, weather-related disruptions, lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising operating costs as the forces that combined to create what it called an unsustainable financial reality.
Notably, the organization insisted the crowds never stopped showing up. Per the same report, attendance at the Celtic Classic remained strong throughout the years, which makes the shutdown less a story of fading interest and more one of a nonprofit's books no longer adding up.
A Festival That Outgrew Its Roots
The Celtic Classic began on Columbus Day weekend in 1988 and grew into a free, three-day showcase of Celtic music, Highland Games competitions, dancing, food, vendors and educational programming, according to LehighValleyLive.com. The festival eventually shifted to late September after organizers moved it based on historical weather data, a change that, per The Brown and White, helped the event thrive in the years that followed. Centered at Main and Spring Streets, the festival drew more than 200,000 visitors annually to Bethlehem over its 39-year run, reaching millions more across its full history.
At the heart of the weekend was the U.S. National Highland Games Championship, which brought professional Highland athletes from across the country to compete in events including the caber toss, sheaf toss, and weight throw for distance and height. This year's championship, held September 25 through 27, was won by John VanBeuren, with organizers describing the competition as especially grueling because of the weather. The National Weather Service recorded 1.02 inches of rain at nearby Lehigh Valley International Airport during the event, and the rain was enough to force cancellation of the Showing of the Tartans parade, which normally runs from Center City Bethlehem to the Daniel E. Rice Memorial Plaza.
Nearly Two Decades Under One Leader
Executive Director Jayne Ann Recker led the Celtic Cultural Alliance for 18 years, guiding it through both expansion and the pandemic's upheavals. Beyond the festival itself, the alliance welcomed millions of visitors to the Lehigh Valley through year-round programming, including the Parade of Shamrocks, concerts, cultural classes and educational offerings, and it funded scholarships for students studying Irish step dance, Highland dance, fiddle and bagpipes, Lehigh Daily reported.
The Numbers Behind the Closure
Lehigh Daily's review of the nonprofit's financial reporting shows the toll those years took. The alliance's net assets fell from $302,927 at the end of 2021 to $99,158 by the close of 2023, as the organization lost $7,122 in 2022 and $196,647 in 2023 while its revenue dropped from $825,818 to $528,151. The 2024 results were a bright spot on paper, with the nonprofit finishing about $47,700 ahead on $878,272 in revenue and net assets climbing back to $146,902 — but total liabilities also rose sharply that year, to $200,428 from $71,775.
Elsewhere, the festival's reach had grown well beyond its original audience. The event's appeal expanded beyond people with direct Irish or Scottish ancestry, the student newspaper noted, offering broader exposure to Celtic culture for a wider Lehigh Valley public.
Not an Isolated Case
Bethlehem's loss fits a pattern playing out elsewhere in 2026. ScotFest Oklahoma held its own final festival this year after 46 seasons, with a board member telling KJRH, “We decided that we would rather go out with a bang than go out with people not coming anymore.” That festival's final weekend ran September 18 through 20 at Broken Arrow Events Park, closing out an event that had grown from a modest Scottish heritage gathering into a full lineup of Highland games, rock music and whiskey tastings.
Across the Atlantic, Scotland's Dornoch Highland Games was canceled with just two weeks' notice amid a police investigation into potential financial irregularities in the organizing committee's accounts, according to The National. That event regularly drew competitors from Europe, the United States, Australia and across the United Kingdom, underscoring how even long-running Highland traditions on both sides of the ocean are facing pressures that outlast any single bad season.
