Tartan Army’s traffic cone craze is taking over Scotland

The Tartan Army’s habit of placing traffic cones on statues during the World Cup has sparked a full-blown craze back home in Scotland, with landmarks from Inverness to Edinburgh now regularly sporting the distinctive orange headwear — and not everybody is laughing.

From Qatar to Queensferry

It started, as many things do with Scottish football fans, with a mixture of high spirits and a convenient piece of roadside equipment. During Scotland’s World Cup campaign, videos of coned statues went viral almost overnight. Fans draped in saltires were filmed hoisting cones onto monuments across host cities, racking up millions of views online. But what happens abroad rarely stays abroad. Back home, the trend has taken on a life of its own. Statues across the country — from Robert Burns in Ayr to the Duke of Wellington in Glasgow, which already has its own long-standing cone tradition — are being targeted nightly. Council workers in at least six Scottish local authority areas have reported a noticeable increase in cone removal call-outs since November, with some teams attending the same sites three or four times in a single week.

Not everyone finds it charming

Glasgow’s Duke of Wellington statue has worn a cone on its head so consistently since the 1980s that the city council eventually gave up trying to stop it. That statue has become a genuine tourist attraction. But civic leaders elsewhere are considerably less amused. A spokesperson for one central Scotland council said: “We absolutely understand there’s a sense of fun involved, but traffic cones exist for public safety. Removing them from roadworks and placing them on statues creates real risks, and the cost of retrieval is ultimately borne by the taxpayer.” Each call-out costs an estimated £180 in staff time and vehicle costs.

The internet is making it worse

Social media has turbo-charged the phenomenon. TikTok videos tagged #ConeScotland have collectively amassed over 14 million views since October. There’s even a loosely organised online community sharing tips on which statues are easiest to access after dark. The competition element — who can cone the most obscure monument — has pushed participants into increasingly creative territory. A bronze salmon sculpture in Perth was coned last month. So was a stone lion outside a courthouse in Stirling.

It’s silly. It’s also, undeniably, very Scottish.

What happens next

Some councils are considering installing CCTV near frequently targeted statues, though critics point out that this seems like an expensive response to a glorified prank. Others have floated the idea of designated “cone-friendly” monuments, a compromise that has been met with roughly equal amounts of enthusiasm and eye-rolling. The Tartan Army’s World Cup adventure may eventually fade from memory. But the cone craze it unleashed feels like it has already embedded itself into Scottish culture permanently — one orange hat at a time.