An online ballot opens on September 28th 2015 for tickets to attend next year’s Thiepval commemorations marking the Battle of the Somme Centenary.
Eight thousand tickets are being made available to the public for the event at the Thiepval Memorial on July 1st 2016.
The ballot is open to residents of the UK, Ireland and France.
Tickets will be free of charge and allocated in pairs.
Commemorations are held every year at Thiepval, on the anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme, to remember all those who fell during the 1916 British offensive.
But the centenary event, led jointly by the UK Government and France’s Mission Centenaire, will be on a larger scale and is expected to attract strong public interest.
It’s being organised in partnership with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which cares for the Thiepval Memorial, and the Royal British Legion.
Plans are being made to broadcast the ceremony live on big screens in towns across the Somme region and the UK.
There will also be a wide programme of events accompanying the Centenary in Britain and France.
More than 72,000 British and South African troops who have no known grave are remembered on the multiple arches of the Thiepval Memorial; the majority of them fell in the fighting of July-November 1916.
Residents of the UK & Ireland will be able to enter the Thiepval ticket ballot online via the official Somme 2016 website. The French Government is leading distribution of its ticket allocation.
Source: UK Government
Images: Centenary News
Posted by: Peter Alhadeff, Centenary News