What's On in Antrim

The Antrim Agricultural Society marks its 120th year in 2026, and its one-day show fills the grounds of Shanes Castle Estate on the shore of Lough Neagh with the best of Northern Irish farming life. Expect displays of some of the country’s finest cattle and sheep, sheep shearing competitions and horse jumping, alongside a petting zoo and a children’s pet show for younger visitors.

Away from the livestock rings, the Home Industries marquee is a show in itself — photography, crafts, floral art, home produce and baking competitions — while live music, children’s amusements and the County Antrim Young Farmers’ Clubs’ games keep the entertainment going through the day.

It is a proper county show in a beautiful demesne setting, and an easy family day out. Admission is payable at the gate on the day, with no advance booking needed.

Féile an Phobail — “the festival of the people” — is Ireland’s biggest community arts festival, and for two weeks each summer it turns West Belfast into one sprawling programme of more than 500 events. The mix is enormous: live music, comedy, theatre, Irish language events, literary readings and poetry, debates and talks, film, walking tours, sports and family activities.

The headline concerts happen in the Féile Marquee at Falls Park, which draws major acts and sells out fast, while a huge share of the wider programme — community events, talks, tours and exhibitions — is free to attend. The festival’s Trad Trail threads traditional music through venues across the west of the city.

In 2026 the festival’s second week overlaps with Belfast’s hosting of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, making the first fortnight of August an extraordinary time for music in the city. Book marquee tickets and accommodation well ahead.

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is the world’s biggest celebration of Irish traditional music, song and dance, and 2026 marks the first time in its history that it comes to Belfast — a fitting host as Ireland’s only UNESCO City of Music. Over 800,000 visitors are expected across the eight days, with the city centre pedestrianised for pub sessions, spontaneous street performances and stage shows.

At the Fleadh’s heart are the All-Ireland competitions, with musicians who have qualified through county and provincial rounds competing across more than 180 categories. Around them, the free outdoor Gig Rig stage beside City Hall runs live performances all week, and no booking is needed for most of the programme; bigger concerts are ticketed through the festival website. The week before, Belfast TradFest (26 July – 2 August) warms the city up with its own concerts, sessions and summer school.

Book accommodation as early as you possibly can — demand will be enormous. Park and ride sites operate around the city, and camping options are listed on the festival site.

Belfast Mela marks its 20th anniversary in 2026, and it has grown into Northern Ireland’s largest celebration of cultural diversity — nine days of music, dance, food and art drawing on traditions from around the world. The festival opens with the Mela Carnival, featuring more than 800 performers, and spreads events across public spaces and venues throughout the city during the week.

Everything builds to Mela Day on Sunday 30 August, when Botanic Gardens becomes a global village from noon to 6pm. Themed areas include the World Stage and Showcase Stage for live performance, a World Food Village, the Mela Bazaar and Little Asia — an easy, colourful day out that families in particular love.

Mela Day is the big public gathering and tickets are booked through the festival website; it is worth securing them ahead rather than chancing the gate on the day.

Billed as Ireland’s oldest traditional fair, the Ould Lammas Fair takes over Ballycastle every late August. The traditional fair days fall on Monday 24 and Tuesday 25 August in 2026, with the celebrations stretching back across the weekend — including evening entertainment and a fireworks display at the seafront.

The old traditions are the draw: a horse village where you can watch deals being struck in the time-honoured way, streets of traders and stalls, and the fair’s two famous delicacies — dulse (dried seaweed) and yellowman, the sweet, sticky honeycomb sold nowhere better. The Naturally North Coast and Glens artisan market adds local crafts, fine art and fresh produce to the mix.

The town gets extremely busy on the fair days. A park and ride runs from the GAA club on Whitepark Road with buses roughly every twenty minutes, and Translink lays on extra bus services, so leave the car outside town if you can.

The Belfast International Tattoo brings the pageantry of a full military-style tattoo to the SSE Arena, uniting local and international performers in a celebration of music, culture and precision drill. The 2026 programme features fourteen acts, from massed pipes and drums, fife and drum corps and accordion bands to the United States Air Force Band in Europe and the Norwegian King’s Guard Veterans Band and Drill Team.

It is not all marching bands either — expect variety acts such as the Dutch Juliana Bicycle Team, artistic roller skating from Precision Team Phoenix and Highland dancers, with pipe bands travelling from as far as Australia. The blend of tradition and spectacle makes it a genuinely family-friendly arena show.

Three performances run across the two days: Friday evening, then a Saturday matinee and evening show. Tickets are on sale through the Tattoo’s website and demand for the Saturday shows is typically strongest.

Culture Night is the all-Ireland celebration of arts and culture, and Belfast’s edition returns on Friday 18 September 2026 with more than 100 free, family-friendly, community-driven events across the city. Following its successful revival in 2025, the format is artist-led and venue-based: well-known venues and hidden gems alike open their doors for one night only.

The appeal is the sheer variety packed into a single evening — live music, dance, theatre, visual arts, talks, workshops and heritage experiences, most of it in places you can simply wander into. It is a night for drifting between venues rather than planning too rigidly, and a great way to see sides of Belfast that are normally closed to visitors.

Everything is free, and the full programme of participating venues is published on Belfast City Council’s Culture Night page closer to the night itself.

For one autumn weekend the Moravian settlement of Gracehill — founded in 1759 and now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site — fills with scarecrows crafted by the local community, propped in gardens and greens throughout the village. The festival proper runs on Saturday 26 September from 11am to 6pm, with the scarecrows staying on display through Sunday for anyone who prefers a quieter wander.

There is a scarecrow trail with an anagram puzzle to solve along the way, visitors vote for their favourite creations, and an artisan market runs in Cennick Hall on the Saturday. It is gentle, good-humoured and very much a family event — and a lovely excuse to explore one of Ireland’s most unusual planned villages, with its Georgian square and Moravian church.

Entry is free; trail guides are available at the village square for a suggested £2 donation, which goes towards preserving the church and its grounds.

Belfast International Arts Festival returns for its 64th edition in autumn 2026, spreading theatre, music and dance across more than 30 venues citywide over almost four weeks. It is the city’s flagship arts event, mixing international productions with home-grown work, and its long run makes it easy to pair a show or two with an autumn city break.

Venues span Belfast’s best rooms — the Lyric Theatre, The MAC, Ulster Hall and Waterfront among them — so a festival visit doubles as a tour of the city’s cultural architecture. Programming runs from large-scale headline productions to more intimate performances and events.

The full programme is revealed in August, with selected highlights already listed on the festival website beforehand. Tickets are booked through the individual venues or via the festival box office, and the bigger international productions tend to sell out early once the programme lands.

The Northern Ireland Open marks ten years of world-class snooker in Belfast in 2026, and the Waterfront Hall has become one of the most popular stops on the World Snooker Tour calendar. A week of ranking-event snooker builds from the early rounds to Sunday’s final, where the winner lifts the Alex Higgins Trophy — named for Belfast’s own two-time world champion.

The roll of past winners tells you the calibre of field to expect: Ronnie O’Sullivan, Mark Williams, Judd Trump and local favourite Mark Allen have all taken the title here. For visitors, it is a rare chance to watch the sport’s biggest names at close quarters in a compact, purpose-built concert hall on the River Lagan.

Tickets run from £13 to £90 plus a booking fee, and sessions are expected to sell out quickly — the evening sessions and finals weekend go first. Under-16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Outburst Queer Arts Festival turns twenty in 2026, and the milestone edition promises to be a celebratory one — nine days of queer art and performance in venues and spaces across Belfast each November. The festival has grown from grassroots beginnings into one of the most distinctive events in Ireland’s cultural calendar, known for work that pushes well beyond surface-level representation.

The programme is a curated mix of new works, special commissions, artist collaborations and pieces selected from an open call that this year drew an unprecedented volume of applications. Expect the unexpected: Outburst’s own billing for the birthday year declares “Queer is a verb! Art is a ride!”

Mid-November is a quiet, good-value time to visit Belfast, and the festival makes a strong anchor for a city weekend. The full 2026 programme and tickets are published on the Outburst Arts website in the run-up to the festival.

Belfast’s Grand Opera House stages its big family pantomime every winter, and for the 2026–27 season the show is The Little Mermaid, running from late November right through to early January. It follows Ariel as she dreams of life among humans and strikes a bargain with an evil Sea Witch over her voice — the usual pantomime mix of song and dance, glittering costumes, dazzling staging, jaw-dropping effects and laugh-out-loud comedy.

At its heart is Belfast’s own May McFettridge, back as the pantomime Dame for a remarkable 36th season, alongside a full cast of principals. It is the city’s definitive Christmas theatre outing, and a first taste of live theatre for many local children.

The panto is recommended for ages three and up, though a few scenes are designed to give a gentle scare and the odd gag is pitched over younger heads. Tickets run from £22.50 to £43.50 including fees, and the Christmas-week performances sell fastest, so book ahead.

The Lyric Theatre’s main-stage Christmas production for 2026 is Little Women, Anne-Marie Casey’s stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s much-loved novel. It runs from 28 November through to early January, following the four March sisters — Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy — as they grow up together in Civil War-era New England.

Where the Grand Opera House offers a traditional pantomime for younger children, the Lyric’s festive show is the more grown-up alternative: a warm, character-driven play that suits families with older children and teenagers. This is a revival of a production that has been well received at the Lyric before, with a running time of around two hours and twenty minutes.

The show is recommended for ages 12 and up. Tickets are £16 to £40, with discounted family tickets available, and the Lyric’s Christmas run traditionally sells out, so it is worth booking early.

Disney On Ice returns to Belfast in the run-up to Christmas with Discover the Magic, an ice spectacular built around an all-star cast of Disney and Pixar characters. Expect Mickey Mouse and Tinker Bell alongside Elsa from Frozen, Moana, Belle, Miguel from Coco, Stitch, and the Toy Story gang of Buzz, Woody and Jessie, brought to life through world-class skating and high-flying acrobatics.

Eight performances run across four days, from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 December 2026, with a mix of morning, matinee and evening shows to suit different family schedules. It is staged at the SSE Arena in the Titanic Quarter, an easy trip from the city centre.

Children under 24 months go free as babes in arms. Tickets are booked through the arena’s box office, and the weekend shows tend to go first, so it is worth planning ahead.

The Balmoral Show is Northern Ireland’s largest agricultural event, and its 158th edition runs over four days from Wednesday 19 to Saturday 22 May 2027 at Balmoral Park, the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society’s showground near Lisburn, about fifteen minutes from Belfast.

It is a proper day out for all ages: rings of prize cattle, sheep and horses, showjumping and equestrian competitions, food and craft halls, trade stands and machinery displays, plus a dedicated family zone of activities for younger visitors. It draws big crowds across the week and has become one of the fixed points of the Northern Irish spring calendar.

The showground sits just off the M1 at Sprucefield, with thousands of parking spaces on site, but the roads get busy on the main days — allow extra travel time, and check the show website for the day-by-day timetable and ticket options before you set off.