Queen legend Freddie Mercury to be honoured in Edinburgh Tattoo's fireworks finale

The Freddie Mercury tribute will take place at the end of each Tattoo performance during the fireworks finale.

Rock icon Freddie Mercury is to be honoured at this year’s Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, organisers have revealed.

The much-loved Queen anthem The Show Must Go On, the band’s last single released before Mercury’s death in 1991, will be performed at the finale of the show, which opens on Friday.

The tribute will be performed on the castle esplanade by the full cast of the show, including the 250-strong massed pipes and drums ensemble, accompanied by a spectacular fireworks display above Edinburgh Castle’s esplanade, where the show is staged.

It has been lined up months after the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which explored Mercury’s relationship with his band-mates, won four Academy Awards, including a best actor honour for star Rami Malek.

Sergeant David Fiu, who is appearing in the Tattoo with the New Zealand Army Band, will step into the shoes of Mercury to sing the anthem in Edinburgh every night of the show’s three-week run.

Other highlights of the Tattoo programme are expected to include music from the soundtrack of the blockbuster Hugh Jackman movie The Greatest Showman and the Bruno Mars hit Uptown Funk.

The Neil Diamond classic Sweet Caroline and the terracing anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone will also feature, and a tune to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s famous 1993 visit to Glasgow after he was released from jail in South Africa.

They will be performed by the cast alongside traditional Tattoo favourites like Amazing Grace, Loch Lomond, Scotland the Brave and Auld Lang Syne.

Other expected highlights in the 69th annual Tattoo include a specially-formed group of high school and university musicians from Beijing, in China, the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Steel Orchestra, the German army band Kassel and France’s La Musique de l’Artillerie, who will stage a spectacular “Can-Can” sequence.

Some of the planned sequences have been designed to replicate the effect of a Kaleidoscope, which was invented in Scotland more than 200 years ago by David Brewster.

The Freddie Mercury tribute has been revealed three years after the Tattoo honoured David Bowie, with a spectacular “Life on Mars” sequence just months after his death.