Urdd Eisteddfod 2024: What you need to know

The Urdd Gobaith Cymru, which organises the Urdd Eisteddfod, is a national voluntary youth organisation with tens of thousands of members aged between eight and 25.

Founded in1922, it came about when the writer Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards asked the children of Wales to join a new movement celebrating Welsh culture.

“These days, in many villages and in most towns in Wales, children play and read in English. They forget that they are Welsh,” he wrote in Welsh monthly magazine Cymru’r Plant.

Sir Ifan’s father, historian Sir Owen Morgan Edwards, had twice previously tried to establish a movement for young people in Wales – Urdd y Delyn in 1896 and Byddin Cymru in 1911 – but both attempts failed.

Sir Owen died in 1920, but passed on his ideas to his son.

The first local Urdd branch was established in Treuddyn, Flintshire, in 1922.