Tartan Army taking over South Florida ahead of Scotland vs. Brazil World Cup match
Get ready, South Florida, for an invasion of 20,000 fun-loving, kilt-clad, bagpipe-playing Scotland World Cup supporters known as the Tartan Army.
They will begin arriving over the weekend for Wednesday’s game against Brazil at Hard Rock Stadium and will surely endear locals with their jovial spirit (No Scotland, No Party!), loud singing and philanthropic gestures, as they did in their takeover of the Boston area during the past week.
They turned every street into a party, drank pubs dry, sang through traffic jams on 21 rented school buses, serenaded baseball fans at a Red Sox game and donated nearly $30,000 to local charities.
They plan more of the same in South Florida.
As of Friday morning, the Tartan Army had already purchased more than 8,000 tickets for Monday night’s Marlins game against the Texas Rangers at loanDepot Park (coincidentally, the same team that played the Red Sox the night the Scots were at Fenway Park).
Needless to say, the Scots also scouted out the South Florida pub scene, with the help of some locals, including David Steedman, 58, of Miramar, a native of Kirkcaldy, Scotland, who moved to Florida in the early 1990s and earlier this year launched a YouTube channel called Haggis305 to offer travel tips to Scottish World Cup tourists.
Mickey Byrne’s Irish Pub in Hollywood has been dubbed as a Tartan Army headquarters with pipe bands coming in from St. Augustine (“America’s Oldest Celtic City”) and local Scottish musicians performing. Five buses will leave from there headed to Hard Rock Stadium on game day and return to the bar for a post-match party.
Bokamper’s in Fort Lauderdale and Mickey Burke’s in South Beach are also Tartan Army hubs, and 10 more buses will depart from those spots to the game.
Many Scottish fans have booked Boston-to-Miami and Boston-to-Fort Lauderdale flights on Delta, and the airline is joining in the Tartan lovefest. Delta is giving priority boarding to any passenger wearing a kilt or traveling with bagpipes on Boston to Miami and Fort Lauderdale flights Saturday through Wednesday morning.
On the Boston end, Delta is sending fans off Scottish-style on Saturday and Sunday with a kilted team member greeting travelers at the gate, live bagpipe music, shortbread and other Scottish snacks, and Scottish-inspired cocktails and mocktails in the Sky Club.
Since this World Cup began, Boston was captivated by the Tartan Army, and videos of their frolics have gone viral all over the world.
The Scots won their first game 1-0 against Haiti last Saturday, and the next day 6,000 members of the Tartan Army turned the Red Sox game into a sing-along the likes of which Bostonians had never seen before.
The Red Sox had promoted the game as “Scotland Day” and the team mascot, Wally, wore a kilt for the occasion. After the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Scottish fans belted out the “Flower of Scotland,” which is the unofficial national anthem.
By the end of the game, they had Red Sox fans singing along to “We’ll Be Coming [Down the Road],” “500 Miles,” “No Scotland, No Party” and “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.”
“Scottish fans go out of their way, when they travel, to be well-liked,” said Steedman, who is helping organize Tartan Army activities during their South Florida stay.
“They have a very strong image, they self-police themselves,” he added. “They want to be loud. They want to be proud. They want people to know that they’re in town, but they want to mix with the locals, have fun with the locals and just be part of the community for that short space of time that they visit these places. I see them as ambassadors for Scotland.”
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Scotland captain Andy Robertson agreed.
“They sing loudly, they sing proudly and that’s why, for me, they’re right up there with the best fans in the world,” Robertson said. “They seem to always make friends along the way, and the locals fall in love with them. The Tartan Army will support us right to the end, and hopefully we can give them something to shout about.”
They were awarded the UEFA Fair Play Trophy in 1993 for their exemplary behavior and have established an official charity, the Tartan Army Sunshine Appeal, to give back to the communities they visit during their travels.
In Boston, they gave a $10,000 donation to the Hasbro Children’s hospital in Providence and split the rest of the $30,000 among the SAMH (Scottish Action for Mental Health) and the Rhode Island Highlanders to set up bagpipe lessons in local schools.
One Scottish fan, 22-year-old Craig Ferguson, raised roughly $1 million for SAMH by completing a 3,200-mile “Tartan Trek” charity walk from Los Angeles to Boston, wearing a kilt the entire way. He crossed the finish line in Boston Common last Friday, in time for the Haiti game, as a large Tartan Army gathering cheered him on.
All over Boston and Providence, Scottish fans who stayed in rented homes went out of their way to meet neighbors and entertain them with bagpipers and traditional tunes. Unlike other passionate World Cup fan groups, the Tartan Army makes it a point to embed itself in local communities.
The nickname Tartan Army was coined by British sports journalists in the 1970s to describe the massive traveling support of the Scotland national football team.
On June 4, 1977, an estimated 50,000 Scottish fans traveled to Wembley Stadium in London for a British Home Championship match against England. Following a 2-1 victory, the Scots invaded the pitch, tore up turf, and broke the goalposts.
Throughout the 1980s, the group was associated with hooliganism and rowdy, drunken behavior typical of European football culture at the time. But since the 1990s, the Tartan Army has made a conscious effort to reshape its image.
“There came a point where the Scottish fans didn’t want to be confused with English fans,” said Andrew Downie, an author and journalist born in Scotland now based in Brazil and Madrid. “Scotland fans took on this new persona of going abroad and being friendly and doing philanthropic acts and singing nice songs and guiding old ladies across the road and carrying people’s bags for them. That’s when things really changed.”
Downie’s wife is Brazilian, so they will have a divided household on Wednesday.
Scotland had not qualified for the World Cup in the past 28 years, so the Tartan Army had to watch the tournament from afar. But that changed on Nov. 28, 2025, when Scotland sealed a berth in the 2026 World Cup with a thrilling 4-2 victory over Denmark at Hampden Park that set off celebrations from the long-suffering Scots.
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Scott McTominay opened the scoring with a third-minute bicycle kick. Late extra-time strikes from Kieran Tierney and Kenny McLean secured the historic win, ending Scotland’s 28-year wait to reach a major tournament.
Steedman followed the match on his phone while riding home from work on his motorbike.
“I had to stop several times because I thought we were going to get blown away, but the scoreline kept changing and when I looked at it at a traffic light, I was like, `Oh my God.’’’ he said. “I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I stopped at a Walgreens parking lot on Pembroke Road and by the end of the game, I was the only one standing there, cheering like nobody’s business. People must have been looking at me to say, `What the hell is he doing?’’’
Despite having qualified on nine occasions, Scotland has never advanced from the group stage.
They hope to make history this summer and got off to a good start with a win over Haiti.
“It’s a massive deal,” Robertson said of Scotland’s qualification. “I think we obviously felt that straight after the Denmark game when we won it, but I suppose the nicest thing about it was the next day and the couple of days after it that I’d spent in Scotland, how happy people were.
“The reaction of everyone in the country, they were so happy for us, so happy for the country that we were back on the biggest stage. To be part of a small squad, only 26 players, but to be able to bring a whole country so much happiness, it was a real sense of achievement, and it gave us a real sense of peace and happiness.”
One of the greatest examples of Tartan Army lore is the story of Scottish businessman Jim Tait, who in 1977 had ambitions plans to charter a military submarine to transport 150 members of the Tartan Army from the River Clyde to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. The deal eventually fell through, but the mere fact that he considered hiring a submarine speaks to the passion of the Scottish fans.
South Florida is about to see it firsthand. A word of warning from Steedman: “A true Scotsman doesn’t wear anything under his kilt.”
This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 2:50 PM.