Festivals of Chemistry Discovery Days 2025 Wrap Up

The end of August marked the conclusion of the Salters’ Institute’s Festivals of Chemistry 2025, with our final Discovery Days of the year at Heriot-Watt University. With Discovery Days taking place from January to August, let’s take a look at the impact the programme had in 2025:

• 17 Discovery Days were hosted covering all four nations of the United Kingdom
  

  A student working in the lab at a Discovery Day.

• 875 students attended in total
• Students attended from 86 different schools across the country

Discovery Days allow students to visit a university and discover what it would be like to pursue chemistry after they finish school. Students get hands-on in a university chemistry laboratory, carrying out practical lab work involving chemical synthesis and analysis. They also get to learn about chemistry research being conducted at the university and hear from a diverse careers panel, where they can ask questions and envisage their future career in chemistry.

A big thank you to our ten university host partners this year: National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, University of Sunderland, University of Bath, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Liverpool, University of Aberdeen, Swansea University, Aston University and Heriot-Watt University. We could not have done it without you!

The 2025 Festivals of Chemistry may be over, but work is now beginning on our 2026 programme, and we hope that it will be even bigger and better than ever! Find out when registration opens for our 2026 Discovery Days by signing up to our Newsletter

Interested in what goes on during our Discovery Days? Learn more about the Salters’ Festivals of Chemistry here

If you have any queries about Festivals of Chemistry, get in touch by emailing us at: [email protected].

Photos: Eva Palazuelos.