1796 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Robert Dundas of Arniston
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Blair

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Succoth
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Braxfield

  Events

• 13 January – the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, predecessor of the University of Strathclyde, is founded under the will of Professor John Anderson.
• February – Thomas Muir of Huntershill, imprisoned for sedition, escapes from the Australian penal colony at Sydney Cove on.
• 21 June – Scottish explorer Mungo Park becomes the first European to reach the Niger River.
• Formation of a reforming Whig party in Edinburgh under the leadership of lawyer Henry Erskine.
• Argyll Mausoleum at Kilmun Parish Church completed.
• Lodges of the Order of Free Gardeners inaugurated at Arbroath, Bothwell and Cumbnathan.

  Births

• 25 January – William MacGillivray, naturalist
• 20 April – George Gleig, soldier, military writer and priest
• 13 September – James Finlay Weir Johnston, chemist
• 17 October – James Matheson, Member of Parliament and co-founder of Jardine, Matheson & Co.
• 24 October – David Roberts, Orientalist landscape painter
• unknown date – John Duncan, theologian and Hebraist

  Deaths

• 13 January – John Anderson, natural philosopher and scientist
• 12 February – John Hamilton, Member of Parliament for Wigtown Burghs and Wigtownshire
• 17 February – James Macpherson, poet, "translator" of Ossian
• 21 July – Robert Burns, poet
• 6 August – David Allan, painter
• 29 September – John Cunningham, 15th Earl of Glencairn, nobleman, cavalry officer and priest
• October – Thomas Christie, radical political writer
• 7 October – Thomas Reid, philosopher
• 24 December – John Maclaurin, Lord Dreghorn, judge and poet

  The arts

• 21 July – death of the national poet, Robert Burns, in Dumfries, at the age of 37. His funeral takes place on 25 July while his wife, Jean, is in labour with their ninth child together, Maxwell. Burns is at first buried in the far corner of St. Michael's Churchyard in Dumfries. The volume of The Scots Musical Museum published this year includes his versions of "Auld Lang Syne" and "Charlie Is My Darling".
• 26-year-old Walter Scott publishes his first work, the ballad "The Chase" – an English language translation of Gottfried August Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger.