2026 Irish Gigs (Confirmed & Rumoured Events)

the Galway airport shows are gone cause MCD/livenation lost a ton of money on them. Only 2 out of the 10 shows in 2024 sold out. The profit margin on shows is at the 90% sold out territory.

There has been a boycott by bands/artists for years against a particular Galway venue. That’s a part as to why it’s not getting certain artists to its shores

What venue may I ask?

Rhymes with "Ploisin Plubh"..

.. I can be cryptic too.

Its likey nothing but jesus U2 have been getting some amount of airplay this past week, maybe they always are on the radio as much and im only noticing....

more so afraid of legal letters

Wow. Monroe's? Would never have guessed.

They are not doing limerick either, just the way it is, I'd go see them in a heartbeat in limerick but can't justify cork at the moment especially on likely a work night

A great booking for the Rory Gallagher festival in Ballyshannon next year

That boycott story was floated in an earlier iteration of this thread a few years back, I think by you, and was roundly rebutted at the time in terms of music acts. There was a real boycott at one time by some comedy acts, although those are booked by a different person. Even that seems hard to see now given the range of acts they get for the Comedy Festival.

And it was only a couple of weeks ago that you were posting about Fat Freddy's Drop's last Irish gig having been in Vicar Street in 2022, even though they'd played Galway in 2023. So I'm not sure you've actually got your finger on the pulse when it comes to Galway.

the council had nothing to do with airport shows not returning. Mcd got licence for 10 in 2024 and never attempted to obtain a licence for 2025 as the 2024 were financial duds for them.
you can’t run an outdoor concert series with only 2 out of 10 shows selling out.

it was said plenty around the city that the Arts festival were pissed off that a 'large' scale effort was being put in elsewhere. Potentially pulling people away from them.

That is true, but being upset and having the power to do something about it are two very different things.

The city councillors effectively said the same thing and so reduced the gig licences from 10 to 6 and now 0.

From a factual perspective that part is total rubbish. The airport is in the County Council area, not the City Council area. The City Councillors did vote to cap the number of gigs at 6, on the basis that the City is part owner of the former airport, but were told in no uncertain terms by the City Executive that they had no power in this matter. It was purely perfomative grandstanding. I'm pretty sure the attendance was capped at 5000, so no licenses were required in any case, but MCD sought permission for 10 gigs, were granted permission for 10 gigs and put on 10 gigs. So there was no reduction in gig licenses and there is no indication that there was an attempt to run the gigs again this year, so licenses being reduced to zero doesn't come into it either. You can be sure that if MCD wanted to run gigs this year, and the City Councillors had managed to torpedo it to protect the Arts Festival, they wouldn't be shy about letting everyone know.

Someone must have been in their ears, because why kill a good thing?

I disagree with other points @Fanirish made above but I think he's correct on the Airport run not having been a success. Only Fatboy Slim and the Wolf Tones sold out. The two gigs I was at were far from full and I heard similar from people who attended some of the others. So nobody in Galway had to "kill a good thing" if there wasn't a "good thing" there to kill in the first place. And, you alluded to the current spat between Roisin Dubh and a half dozen other Galway bars about the Christmas Beer Tent. If Roisin Dubh was really as all powerful as you seem to think, so that they were able to successfully chase MCD out of town, surely they would be able to see off a challenge by some local minnows and wouldn't have had to accept the restrictions that have been imposed on them in the Beer Tent this year?

As for whether the Airport gigs were better or not, from what you've written, it sounds like you are maybe remembering Big Top gigs from the distant past rather than anything in the last decade.

A paved ground was a big help for a start and while I understand that that is not something that the Arts festival can control, something that they can control is putting down a temporary ground in a larger area.

The Big Top does lay down a temporary surface inside the tent and in the toilets and bars and wide walkways connecting them all. There is some grass to sit on before the bands play, which is nice if you're lucky enough to get pleasant weather, but the majority of the accessible territory has a temporary surface. In all the gigs I've attended there I've never once found myself walking in mud.

The toilets set up was better in the airport with a better ratio of Female:Male portaloos to effectively manage crowd control and a queuing system.

All the gigs I've attended at the Big Top I've been with my better half. We've never had a problem with the toilets, male or female. In and out quickly, often without a queue, and if there is one it's orderly and speedy.

The food choice were better IMO, and the bar staff and ordering system was miles ahead. You ordered and paid for your pints in one go. Tap straight away and someone else brought up the drinks to you instantly.

The way you described the ordering system in the Airport is also exactly how it works in the Big Top and has done for years. You arrive at the counter and there are two staff at each service point, one takes your payment and other grabs your drinks from the the serving counter behind them. It's instantaneous. It's comments like these that make me think you haven't actually been to the Big Top in recent years.

No deposits needed for the cups either. The arts festival had a system where you pay for a deport for a cup then order your pint where the person then goes around and gets your drink from the stand behind and then tells you the price before releasing that the year is 2025 and nearly everyone pays by tap now so they turn around and go back to collect the card machine from a stand and goes back over to you to pay. A lot of drawn out process. You then have to return the cup to get your deposit back but you can't order a drink from there and have to queue up again for a second drink.

I have a big issue with the deposit system at the Big Top. It is a scam and not the incentive to recycle that it claims to be. But it doesn't work remotely like you have described; it's much more smooth flowing. You go up and order your drink and €2 gets added to your bill which you can get it back at the end of the evening when you've finished drinking. You do not have to queue up separately to pay a deposit for a cup before you order a drink. You do not have staff going to collect a card machine from a stand, they all have card readers right in front of them. And you do not have to return your cup to get your deposit back between each drink. You go up with your old cup in your hand, and they take it off you and give you a new one, and don't charge you a second deposit because you handed your old cup in. You only need to go to the separate counter to get your deposit back when you're finished drinking. It sounds like you've taken your information from a garbled interpretation of the complaints about the deposit system on Reddit rather than actually having attended any recent Big Top gigs.

The airport gigs had a big convoy of city buses waiting after every gig to bring you back into the city. Extremely easy to get out of. It also had a car park.

The car parking system at the Airport was painful. You had to buy expensive tickets in advance and then scan them on the way in. For the third time in recent memory the scanners at an MCD event in Galway were crap. The staff complained about problems with connectivity (as they had on previous occasions) but still insisted on trying and trying until they got your barcode to scan instead of just visually checking the ticket and keeping the queue moving. It meant that, even though we arrived in plenty time on the night the Pixies were playing, we spent ages waiting to get checked into the car park and missed the first couple of songs from NewDad. I was raging. Having buses is better than not having them but that still doesn't make it a more convenient location than the Big Top. If you are using public transport it's an extra leg, and an expensive one at that. For the Big Top you can come into the centre on your Leap Card and you're there already; no expensive special bus to change onto. If you're driving you can park at the Cathedral or the Dyke Road for free, and you're still closer to the Big Top than you were from the further ends of the runway parking at the Airport. And when you park in town there are no queues to get out of the carparks. Many people choose to walk elsewhere before going home when the leave the Big Top, but at the Airport there's nowhere to walk to, so all of those drivers were trying to leave the car park at the same time and the queues were long and ill tempered.

While I have a big problem with the cup deposit at the Big Top, for me by all other measures the Big Top is at least as good as what was on offer at the Airport and, in terms of access, was far superior. For me the inconvenience of having to spend a minute or two queuing at the Big Top to get a €2 cup deposit back when I've finished drinking is insignificant when compared to the frustration of having to pay €12 for very badly organised parking at the Airport and missing part of the set of a band I really wanted to see as a consequence.

Kilmainham written all over it

mountain goats with Craig Finn from the holdsteady on support