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Thought Fleadh Cheoil was over? Not quite. The city-wide fringe programme signs off in style this week with a wrap-up we...
18/08/2026

Thought Fleadh Cheoil was over? Not quite. The city-wide fringe programme signs off in style this week with a wrap-up weekend running from Thursday 20th to Sunday 23th August, and it reaches every corner of Belfast!

There’s Museum Late - Ceol and Craic at the Ulster Museum, an evening of bilingual song and story at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, cabaret blending music, spoken word and storytelling at the Duncairn, and Rónán Ó Snodaigh with Myles O’Reilly at Skainos.

Templemore Baths hosts Harry Bradley, Rev Gary Hastings and Aoife Granville for an afternoon of flute and fife, while families can take their pick from a céilí at the Commons on the Ormeau Road, a fun day with Anaka Women’s Collective on Donegall Street, and Super Session Sunday at the ABC Hub in Ardoyne. It all wraps with the Highlands, Islands and Ireland concert at St Colmcille’s Church on Sunday night: the official closing event of the city-wide fringe.

Several events are free, with tickets for the rest from just £8. Delivered by The Duncairn on behalf of Belfast City Council and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann.

Full details and booking via the Duncairn box office 🎻

https://www.theduncairn.com/latest-news-1/2026/7/25/city-wide-fleadh-fringe-2026

Hundreds of ukulele players are set to descend on Donegall Quay this weekend 🎶Supported through Belfast City Council's B...
13/08/2026

Hundreds of ukulele players are set to descend on Donegall Quay this weekend 🎶

Supported through Belfast City Council's Bank of Ideas, Belfast Ukulele Festival brings The Big Ukulele Jam to the Big Fish this Sunday, August 16th, aiming for the biggest gathering of ukulele players Belfast has ever seen. They’re even hoping to set an all-Ireland record while they’re at it.

The giant singalong kicks off at 2pm and it’s completely free. Whether you’re part of a ukulele group or a lone strummer, players of all ages and abilities are welcome, and curious spectators are too.

All the songs on the day come from this year’s festival songbook, so download your copy below and bring it along on your device with your uke and your singing voice.

https://www.belfastukefest.co.uk/the-big-jam

The Fleadh may be over, but look at what it left behind.More than 1.6 million visits were recorded across Belfast city c...
10/08/2026

The Fleadh may be over, but look at what it left behind.

More than 1.6 million visits were recorded across Belfast city centre during Fleadh week, according to Belfast One BID's footfall cameras, with Saturday 8th August alone bringing 289,560 people into town, the busiest day of the year so far. The first All-Ireland Fleadh ever held in this city, and Belfast turned out for it in numbers nobody will forget.

Behind that figure is a week of moments: sessions spilling out of pubs and into alleyways, the Gig Rig at City Hall, every tradition on this island sharing the same stages, and a city centre that felt alive from morning until well past midnight. Visitors came from all over the world and found a Belfast at its very best.

To everyone who played, danced, sang, volunteered or simply showed up: this was yours. And the best bit? The Fleadh returns to Belfast in 2027. We're 👏 only 👏 getting 👏 started.

09/08/2026

It’s the final day of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann Belfast 2026. And what a week it’s been.

Some of the very best Fleadh moments have happened between two rows of houses. Yesterday, neighbours in the Haypark and Rushfield alleyway pulled out the chairs, tuned up and let a session take hold. Seisiúin Ceoil Traidisiúnta, right where people live, with the tunes drifting over back walls and everyone welcome to pull up a seat.

This is the beating heart of this festival. Sessions have been springing up all week in pubs and alleyways, in community spaces and on street corners right across the city. No tickets needed or barriers up: just people and music finding each other. It’s what the Fleadh has always been about, and this week Belfast has shown it knows exactly how it’s done!

07/08/2026

Last night the Titanic Slipways hosted something quietly historic. The Ulster Bands Showcase, presented by the Belfast Bands Forum, brought the sounds and craftsmanship of Unionist and Ulster-Scots musical tradition into the heart of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.

Flute bands, pipe bands, Lambeg drumming and Scottish country dancing filled the Slipways, with performances from the Imperial Guards Belfast, Sir Henry Inglesby Fife and Drum, County Armagh Drum Majors and more, alongside Highland dance sets from the Molly Smith School of Highland Dance and Sollus Highland Dancers.

The first Fleadh ever held in Belfast was always going to mean something. Last night showed exactly what: a festival with room for every tradition on this island, and a city confident enough to celebrate all of them on the same stage. Among the crowd were the Lord Mayor, the Taoiseach and the Communities Minister, watching it happen together.

There’s more where that came from. Follow along all week for the rest of Fleadh Belfast 2026.

Some awards just land right. Last night at Belfast City Hall, Dónal O'Connor, Artistic Director of Belfast TradFest, rec...
05/08/2026

Some awards just land right. Last night at Belfast City Hall, Dónal O'Connor, Artistic Director of Belfast TradFest, received the Comhaltas Ceannródaithe award at the Bardic Awards, honouring exceptional contributions to the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music, song, dance and culture.

Few have earned it like Dónal. Belfast TradFest, having just wrapped its breathtakingly brilliant 2026 outing, is no small part of why the Fleadh believed in Belfast in the first place, and why the city was ready when it arrived. To see that recognised in City Hall, with the Fleadh in full voice outside the same building, is about as fitting as it gets. Congratulations too to fellow awardees Niall McClean, Francis McPeake and Maurice Brown, honoured alongside him.

Comhghairdeas, Dónal! This city owes you a tune or ten. 🏆

2 Royal Avenue has two of Fleadh Cheoil'ss most special evenings lined up this week. Tomorrow night, Thurs 6th August fr...
05/08/2026

2 Royal Avenue has two of Fleadh Cheoil'ss most special evenings lined up this week. Tomorrow night, Thurs 6th August from 6pm, Stendhal Festival brings its takeover: sixteen years of championing homegrown talent distilled into one Fleadh showcase, with Alana Henderson, Paddy Nash & Friends and Polar Bolero among those celebrating the creative community at the heart of it all. Bígí linn, as they say! Tickets a tenner.

Then Friday belongs to MOIRO: the Music of Irish Origin stage, presented by Smashing Buttons, where trad meets everything it's influenced over the last eighty years. The daytime brings rising singer-songwriter Cora Harkin and BGT semi-finalist Niamh Noade playing alongside three generations of her own family, before the evening runs from Trad Folkin' Rocks through Charlie Hanlon and VERA to a spellbinding close from Dark Tropics, whose cinematic pop-noir has won support from Radio 1 to RTÉ.

And here's the detail we love: kids go free and they're welcome to stay right to the 11pm finish, so nobody's carried home before the good bit. £5 adults, £4 concessions.

Two nights in one address, and the whole story of Irish music in miniature. Tickets below.

https://fleadhcheoil.ie/event/smashing-buttons-presents-moiro/106910101/

https://fleadhcheoil.ie/event/stendhal-festival-presents/106843101/

The Gradam spirit is having quite a week 🎻Yesterday the Comhaltas Gradam Inclusion Awards filled The MAC, celebrating tr...
04/08/2026

The Gradam spirit is having quite a week 🎻

Yesterday the Comhaltas Gradam Inclusion Awards filled The MAC, celebrating traditional musicians with additional needs in front of the President of Ireland herself. Tomorrow afternoon, the baton passes to the next generation: The New Generation, a special matinée at the Ulster Museum, Belfast marking five years of The Duncairn's Gradam Ceoil TG4 Traditional Music Bursary Awards

The bill is the future of Belfast trad in one room: current bursary winners Eimear Magee, Jack McGoldrick and Peadar Connor, joined by past awardees Brendan Kerr, Jude Scott, Sinéad McKenna and Erin-Rose Ní Mhaoláin, with broadcaster Lynette Fay hosting, new collaborations promised and a surprise guest or two besides.

Proudly supported by Belfast City Council and TG4, the bursary has spent five years investing in exactly the artists shaping this city's growing reputation as a UNESCO City of Music, and tomorrow you can hear where that investment's going for a fiver.

Tomorrow, Weds 5th August, 2pm to 4pm, Ulster Museum lecture theatre, Botanic Gardens. Tickets here:

https://fleadhcheoil.ie/event/the-new-generation-%E2%80%93-gradam-ceoil-bursary-concert/106831101/

Day one was some start! Here’s the rest of day two, and it’s a deep one.First, move quick: at 2.30pm the Black Box hosts...
03/08/2026

Day one was some start! Here’s the rest of day two, and it’s a deep one.

First, move quick: at 2.30pm the Black Box hosts The Neuroscience of the Harper’s Brain, where harpist Ursula Burns and Ulster University’s Dr Niamh Kennedy wire up live music to actual brain science. The wee ones take over 2 Royal Avenue from 3 with the children’s daily seisiúns.

From teatime it spreads everywhere. Uilleann pipes meet storytelling on the Barge at 5, the Duncairn hosts singer Amhlaoibh Mac Suibhne at half 5, and Queen’s Film Theatre screens Nothing Compares at 6: Belfast-born director Kathryn Ferguson’s award-winning Sinéad O’Connor film, with a Q&A after.

Then the night proper: Wexford Comhaltas bring the Yellowbelly Seisiún to the Pavilion at 7, the Waterfront hosts the Ards CCÉ 50th Anniversary Concert at 8, celebrating the host branch’s half century, and the pubs carry it home, from a Fleadh Cheoil edition of Kick Out the Jams on Lavery’s roof terrace at 8 to Three Pints Deep’s session at the John Hewitt at 9.

And on the Gig Rig at City Hall: free music all afternoon, building to Auris at 9pm, where jigs and reels meet funk basslines and jazz keys. Day two’s headliner, and the sound of where this tradition’s going.

Nearly all of it free. Full listings: http://www.fleadhcheoil.ie/

Let’s talk about the beating heart of the Fleadh. From tomorrow, Sunday 2nd August, the Gig Rig outside City Hall runs f...
01/08/2026

Let’s talk about the beating heart of the Fleadh. From tomorrow, Sunday 2nd August, the Gig Rig outside City Hall runs for eight straight days: free performances from noon till late, no tickets, just the best of traditional music and beyond in the middle of your city 🎵

And what a bill it’s become. Here’s one worth shouting about properly: Hot House Flowers are heading the opening celebrations tomorrow at 2pm. Liam Ó Maonlaí fronting one of Ireland’s most beloved live bands, a sean-nós singer who filled stadiums, on a free stage in the middle of Belfast on the very first day of its very first Fleadh: there might not be a more perfect start imaginable.

Armagh’s own Annallise Whyte follows with her band, before an afternoon and evening that brings the Blackwater Céilí Band, Goitse, and Sharon Shannon and her big band closing the first night at 8pm. Across the rest of the week expect Lúnasa, Foy Vance, Sí Fiddlers with their massed Donegal fiddle power, as well as open air céilís and the Connections showcase bringing artists from every background to one stage.

Free and every day at City Hall. The place to start every Fleadh day. Full line-up: https://fleadhcheoil.ie/

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