Christmas in Glasgow: Elfingrove event will not return to the West End for 2023

Confirming the news this afternoon, CEO of itison and founder of Elfingrove, Oli Norman said: “Lots of folk have been in touch over the past week or so asking our plans for Elfingrove.

“Today we are sharing the news that we are putting Elfingrove on ice for this Christmas coming.

“A few years ago we made a huge infrastructure investment to create the UK’s biggest and most exciting ice rink with a custom design inspired by the ice tracks I saw when visiting the phenomenal Ice World in Vienna.

“Over the past couple of years, hundreds of thousands of people have joined us on the rink at Elfingrove set against the spectacular backdrop of Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum which looked like a scene straight out of a Christmas movie.

“It was amazing to see our vision come to life and set the bar for a Glasgow Christmas experience to rival the likes of Rockefeller Centre in New York - I’m incredibly proud of our team for delivering an event of this scale and magnitude.

“Large-scale temporary events by their nature require huge levels of investment and in feasibility planning this year, we have been hit by inflation and skyrocketing prices across the supply chain which would have required huge price hikes in order to make the event stack up.

“We weren’t comfortable in passing these increases onto our customers and as a result we have decided to put this year’s Elfingrove on ice whilst we work on an even more magical new event that will take Glasgow’s Christmas offering to the next level.

“Next month we kick off with the sixth year of GlasGLOW, in the Botanic Gardens – which is now the UK’s biggest Halloween event.

“The show is back with an exciting new creative inspired by Ghostbusters and is on track for another sell-out - limited tickets still available at glasglow.com including peak weekend slots for the final week.