Funding for Edinburgh's winter festivals has been cut by a third.

The city council's grant for the world-famous New Year festival will be reduced from £1.2m to just over £800,000, while no cash has been allocated for Christmas.

Councillors said the current contract with Unique Events and Underbelly for the winter festivals was coming to an end as planned and the cuts were required to ease budget pressures.

The popular events, which attract tens of thousands of people every year, are now being put out to tender for firms to run on behalf of the local authority.

The new three-year contract will be for April 2017 until winter 2019/2020 and will have the option to extend for up to three additional years.

The producers of the 2016/17 winter festivals received £1,262,456 from the council, with the majority of the cash directed towards Hogmanay.

The new tender outlines the 2017/18 subsidy as £812,456 and specifies the grant will be for Hogmanay, with no sum allocated to Christmas activities.

The funding cut was revealed just days after organisers of the Edinburgh's Christmas hailed record numbers.

Edinburgh City Council festivals and events champion Richard Lewis said: "Edinburgh's Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations are world renowned, providing the city and Scotland with unrivalled promotion and a great boost to the winter economy.

"Over the last three years, the festivals have gone from strength to strength but the costs incurred of policing Hogmanay and pressure on the council's budget has continued to increase.

"As we take these events to market, our priority now will be to ensure best value for the city while retaining Edinburgh's position as a fantastic winter destination.

"This is an exciting opportunity to build on the huge success of the winter festivals to date and identify new, creative activities and events to refresh and enhance the programme going forward."