What's On in Clare

Run by the local Comhaltas branch, this West Clare festival turns Kilrush over to traditional music and dance for a week spanning the August bank holiday. Its signature is the open-air céilís in the town square, with well-known céilí bands — the 2026 line-up includes the Dal gCais, Johnny Reidy, Donie Nolan and Shandrum bands — playing for dancers under the open sky.

Around the céilís there are workshops in music and dancing, a concert at the Teach Ceoil, evening sessions in the town’s bars and a busking competition, so there is plenty to watch even if you never join a set. It is a participatory festival at heart, though: set dancers travel from all over Ireland for it, and beginners are generally swept along.

Kilrush is a marketplace town on the Shannon Estuary, handy to Loop Head and the Scattery Island boats, so the festival pairs easily with a few days exploring the peninsula.

Scariff’s harbour, on a navigable stretch of waterway off Lough Derg, gives this East Clare town its festival every August bank holiday weekend. The 2026 edition opens on the Thursday night with Don Stiffe and The Voices of Ireland in the Church of the Sacred Heart — a concert that has become a staple of the festival, and its only paid ticketed music event.

Everything after that happens on the streets for free. Jack Lukeman headlines the outdoor music, with a bill that also takes in Eirfoyl — a Japanese pop-rock band fronted by Irish vocalist Bobby McMahon — the Cnoc na Gaoithe Céilí Band, The Kilkennys and a Qween tribute act, among others.

It is an easy-going, family-oriented weekend rather than a big-ticket event, and a good excuse to see the quieter Lough Derg side of Clare. Tickets for the opening concert are sold locally in Scariff and through the festival website, and early booking is advised.

Feakle is a tiny village in the hills of East Clare with an outsized place in Irish traditional music, and for six days each August its festival draws musicians, singers and dancers from all over Ireland and well beyond. The 2026 festival is the 39th edition.

The programme mixes ticketed concerts and talks with instrument workshops — fiddle, concertina and accordion among them — and the sessions are the connective tissue: they run through the whole festival and any musician is welcome to sit in. The events spread right across the village, so you wander between venues with music spilling out of doorways as you go.

Concert tickets are sold through the festival website. Feakle is a small village and festival week is its busiest of the year, so sort accommodation early — whether in the village itself or within driving distance in East Clare.

Held on the third Sunday of August, the Mullagh Show is a proper community-run agricultural show, now in its 31st year, showcasing the best of West Clare farming and food. Livestock classes and local producers form the core of the day, with exhibitions of regional produce alongside.

What makes it an easy stop for visiting families is the family day woven through it: children’s sporting and fun activities run all afternoon and every one of them is free of charge. The venue — Mullagh Community Sports Field — also has access to an autism-friendly playground.

Mullagh sits just inland of the coast between Quilty and Miltown Malbay, a short detour off the Wild Atlantic Way, so the show slots neatly into a day driving the West Clare coastline. If you have never been to a small Irish agricultural show, this is the genuine article — unhurried, sociable and very local.

For one weekend the karst landscape around Caherconnell Stone Fort fills with smoke and hammering as iron smelters and blacksmiths fire up bloomery furnaces the way it was done centuries ago. Visitors can watch the whole ancient process — furnaces built, ore smelted into iron, and the metal forged into tools and objects — with the medieval fort itself as the backdrop.

Now in its fourth edition, the festival is organised under the Irish Iron Heritage Foundation, a charity dedicated to keeping these early metalworking crafts alive, and it draws practitioners of a craft you will rarely see demonstrated anywhere else in Ireland.

Caherconnell sits near Carron in the heart of the Burren, close to Poulnabrone dolmen, so the festival combines naturally with a day exploring the Burren’s archaeology. Check the festival website for admission details and timings before travelling.

Every September the small spa town of Lisdoonvarna gives itself over to a full month of matchmaking, music and dancing — a tradition well over a century old that now draws tens of thousands of visitors of every age from all over the world. The bars fill with live music and dancing from noon until late, every day, with the weekends the liveliest.

The heart of it is Willie Daly, Ireland’s last traditional matchmaker, who holds court in his “office” in the Matchmaker Bar. Tradition has it that touching his weathered lucky book with both hands means you will be married within six months — plenty come just for the story, romance optional.

You do not need to be single to enjoy it: the dancing and the craic are the real draw for many. Accommodation in Lisdoonvarna books out well ahead for September, so reserve early or stay in nearby Doolin or Ballyvaughan and travel in.

The Walker Cup is amateur golf’s biggest occasion: a biennial team match between Great Britain & Ireland and the United States, first played in 1922. The 51st match brings it to Lahinch for the first time in its history — only the third Irish venue ever, after Portmarnock in 1991 and Royal County Down in 2007.

Lahinch is a fitting stage. The Old Course was originally laid out by Old Tom Morris and re-designed by Dr Alister MacKenzie in the 1920s, and its dunes make for wonderful spectating as the matches unfold over the two days.

Tickets must be bought in advance — €45 for a single day or €80 for a weekend pass, with free entry for under-16s accompanied by a paying adult and discounted youth tickets for ages 16 to 24. Lahinch village sits right beside the links, and demand for accommodation on this weekend will be strong, so book well ahead.

The Amgen Irish Open is one of the flagship events of the DP World Tour season, and in 2026 it comes to the wild west coast of County Clare for the first time in the tournament’s history. Four days of competitive play run from Thursday to Sunday on the dune-backed links at Doonbeg, overlooking Doughmore Bay.

For Irish golf fans it is a rare chance to watch top-level tournament golf in the county, and it lands in a remarkable September for Clare — the Walker Cup is played at Lahinch, less than an hour up the coast, the weekend before.

Doonbeg is a small village on the west Clare coast, roughly midway between Kilkee and Quilty on the Wild Atlantic Way. Expect significant crowds and plan transport ahead; tickets and spectator information are available through the DP World Tour’s official tournament pages.

Timed for the year the 1926 Irish Census — the first full snapshot of Ireland after independence — was finally opened to the public, this weekend conference from the Kilrush & District Historical Society takes the theme “From the Great Famine to the 1926 Census”. It is aimed squarely at anyone tracing Irish ancestors, whether local or visiting from the diaspora.

The programme combines talks from well-known genealogists and archivists with one-to-one consultations, where experienced researchers help attendees work through their own family puzzles. Around the lectures there are optional excursions that show off the corner of Clare itself: a bus tour of the Loop Head Peninsula and a boat trip to the monastic ruins on Scattery Island.

Full conference registration is €180, but two events are free to all comers — a historical walking tour of Kilrush and a traditional music session — so even casual visitors in town that weekend can dip in.

Ennis Trad Fest fills Clare’s county town with traditional music for five days each November, and 2026 marks the festival’s 32nd edition. The format that has made it an institution is the session trail: a rolling programme of sessions through the pubs of the medieval town centre, where some of the best players in the tradition turn up in ordinary bars a few feet from the audience.

Around the trail sit ticketed concerts, album launches, masterclasses for musicians, a “Trad 4 Teens” strand and a run of free events, so it caters as well to listeners as to players. Coming after the summer festival season has wound down, it is one of the best reasons to visit Clare in the off-season, when Ennis’s narrow streets are at their most atmospheric.

The full 2026 line-up is announced closer to the festival on the official website — worth checking before booking, though the session trail alone justifies the trip for most visitors.