Overview
- Organisers confirmed on July 10 that Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla will attend the Opening Ceremony at The Hydro on July 23 and that the King will read the message placed in the Scotland baton to declare Glasgow 2026 open.
- The King’s Baton Relay, which ran for about 500 days and visited all 74 Commonwealth nations and territories, will reunite each nation’s individually crafted baton for the first time at the ceremony.
- Six‑time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy will take part in the opening ceremony and Scottish artists including KT Tunstall and Nathan Evans are among the performers, with Channel 5 broadcasting the ceremony live under licence from TNT Sports and BBC Alba providing nightly coverage and highlights.
- The Games run from July 23 to August 2, will host more than 3,000 athletes from 74 nations and territories across 10 sports and six Para sports, and have been staged in a condensed venue corridor using existing sites to cut costs and emissions.
- The Baton Relay carried the Commonwealth Clean Ocean Plastics Campaign with the Royal Commonwealth Society, linking community coastal clean‑ups and a target to stop one million pieces of plastic entering Commonwealth waters while testing a lower‑cost, greener model for future multi‑sport events.