The first version was modest. In 1949, a show called "Something About a Soldier" was staged at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens. The first official Edinburgh Military Tattoo followed in 1950, with eight items on the programme and about 6,000 people watching from simple benches and scaffolding around the castle esplanade. Demand grew quickly. By the 1970s the stands held over 8,000 each night. By the late 1990s tickets sold out every year - twenty-two consecutive sellout seasons before the COVID-19 pandemic forced cancellation in 2020 and 2021. According to figures the Tattoo submitted to the Scottish Parliament, about 38% of recent audiences were international visitors from 69 countries, with another 32% from the rest of the UK and 30% from Scotland itself.

Every performance starts with a fanfare, usually composed for that year. Then the Massed Pipes and Drums march through the castle's gatehouse and onto the esplanade - hundreds of pipers and drummers from regiments across Scotland and beyond, sound bouncing off the castle walls in a way no recording ever quite captures. The featured acts follow individually. Most are military bands and display teams, but since 1995 civilian performers have also been welcomed; the Top Secret Drum Corps from Basel has returned eight times, blending precision drumming with theatrical lighting effects. Since 2012 each night ends with fireworks. From 2005 to 2015 a son et lumière threw projected images onto the castle facade; in 2016 the projection technology was upgraded to full projection mapping, and in 2018 lasers were added. The castle itself has become the screen.

In 2010, on the Tattoo's sixtieth anniversary, Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "Royal," and it became the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. By then the show was televised to forty countries with an estimated worldwide audience of 100 to 300 million. The 2025 edition celebrated 75 years with a programme titled "Heroes Who Made Us," led by the 1st Battalion, The Royal Yorkshire Regiment. It was nearly perfect except for one missing night: on 4 August 2025, Storm Floris struck the United Kingdom and forced the first weather cancellation in the event's history - 75 years of running rain or shine, finally interrupted. Otherwise the show goes on every weekday evening throughout August, twice on Saturdays, with empty Sundays the only rest.

Stand anywhere in Edinburgh's Old Town on an August night and you can hear the Tattoo. The massed pipes carry down the Royal Mile, audible at the Mercat Cross and even at Holyrood Palace a mile away. Locals develop a complicated relationship with the noise - tourists pay hundreds of pounds to hear it from the stands, residents of the High Street hear it free through their bedroom windows every night for a month. Free abridged performances called "Taste of the Tattoo" have been staged at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens since 2004 and in Glasgow's George Square since 2008. The show has toured to Wellington, Sydney, and Melbourne, and a 2020 China tour was cancelled by the pandemic. Through all the international travel, the home performance remains anchored to a single set of cobblestones on a Scottish hillside.