What's On in Galway

Ireland's leading international film festival showcasing a diverse array of Irish and international cinema, including feature films, documentaries, and shorts. The six-day event takes place across multiple venues in Galway City, offering screenings, Q&As, and industry talks for film enthusiasts.

Galway International Arts Festival is one of Ireland’s best-known arts festivals, with programming across many venues in Galway over two weeks in July. Check the official site for the latest lineup, ticket releases, and venue details.

The Galway Races Summer Festival returns to Galway Racecourse at Ballybrit from 27 July to 2 August 2026. This seven-day event is one of the highlights of the Irish horse racing calendar, drawing visitors from across Ireland and abroad for top-class racing, fashion, and a lively social atmosphere.

Each day of the festival features a full programme of racing, with the social calendar including events such as Ladies Day. The atmosphere around the track, the parade ring, and the bars and restaurants is a key part of the experience.

Tickets are sold for individual days, with prices varying depending on the day and enclosure. The full programme of racing, fashion events, and ticket options are available on the official website.

Galway Community Pride, described by its organisers as the longest continually running Pride event in Ireland, returns from 2 to 8 August 2026 under the theme “Still We Rise”. It is a volunteer-run, community-led festival rather than a single ticketed event, spreading a full week of gatherings, talks, arts and performance nights, music and social occasions across venues around the city.

The centrepiece is the Pride parade on Saturday 8 August, a loud and colourful procession through the city centre that draws big crowds of participants and spectators alike. Much of the wider programme is free and family-friendly, with a handful of evening and performance events ticketed separately.

Galway is compact and walkable, so the festival is easy to dip in and out of over the week. Check the festival website closer to the time for the confirmed schedule, parade assembly details and any events that need booking ahead.

Cruinniú na mBád — the Gathering of the Boats — celebrates the Galway hooker, the tarred-hull wooden sailing boat that once carried turf and cargo along the Connemara and north Clare coasts. Revived in 1979, the festival brings a fleet of these distinctive red-sailed boats into Kinvara’s harbour for a weekend of racing, with classes for the four traditional types, from the big Bád Mór down to the little Púcán.

The regatta is only half of it. While the boats race in the bay, the harbour village gives itself over to traditional music, and the pubs fill with sessions through the weekend. It is as much a celebration of the culture around the boats — boat building, sail making, sean-nós singing — as of the sailing itself.

Entry is free all weekend, and it’s an easy trip without a car: Bus Éireann routes between Galway and Ennis serve Kinvara, with late evening departures in both directions over the festival.

Clifden’s annual pony show marks 101 years in 2026, and it remains the definitive gathering of Ireland’s native pony breed — judged in Connemara itself, the landscape that shaped it. Breeders, riders and pony enthusiasts make the trip to west Galway for it every August.

Each of the four days has its own character: loose jumping championships and the show launch open proceedings, followed by the in-hand show day with its supreme championship, then ridden classes and championship, and finally working hunter classes and the Parade of Champions to close. Alongside the serious judging there is plenty for a casual visitor — the in-hand day also features domestic arts, a dog show and Irish dancing.

You don’t need to know anything about ponies to enjoy it; the in-hand show day, with the supreme championship and the family events around it, is the day most visitors plan around. Queries go to the show office at info@connemaraponyshow.ie.

Clifden Arts Festival, heading into its 49th year, bills itself as the longest-running community arts festival in Ireland — a September fixture that fills the Connemara market town with music, literature, theatre, visual art and film for eleven days.

What sets it apart is the community footing. This is not a festival parachuted into a venue on the edge of town; it grew out of Clifden itself and runs right through it, pairing local involvement with headline national and international acts. The 2026 programme was still being revealed through the summer, with the first headliners announced in June and full details following via the festival’s programme and box office.

Mid-September is a lovely, quieter time to be in Connemara, and the festival makes a natural anchor for a few days exploring the region — check the programme online before travelling, as individual events are ticketed separately and the popular ones sell through the festival box office.

Culture Night (Oíche Chultúir) is a national, island-wide celebration of arts, culture and creativity, and Galway City is one of its busiest hubs. For its 21st edition it falls on Friday 18 September 2026, when museums, galleries, artists’ studios, theatres and cultural spaces across the city throw open their doors for free from late afternoon into the night.

Galway City Council coordinates the local programme, which typically ranges across Galway Central, City East and City West with performances, workshops, exhibitions, tours and hands-on activities. Everything on the night is free of charge, and the relaxed, walk-around format makes it a good one for families and first-time visitors curious about the city’s creative side.

The full line-up of participating venues and times is published closer to the date. A few of the most popular events fill up, so it is worth checking the programme in advance and planning a route between a couple of venues rather than trying to see everything.

Founded to celebrate the start of the native oyster season, which runs from September to April, the Galway International Oyster & Seafood Festival is billed as the world’s longest-running oyster festival — 2026 is its 72nd year. For one weekend at the end of September, the city gives itself over to seafood.

The centrepiece is competitive shucking: the Irish and World Oyster Opening Championships draw shuckers from across the globe to race through trays of oysters against the clock, and they are genuinely gripping to watch. Around the championships run live music and on-street entertainment, with set-piece events including oyster farm tours, an oyster trail and the RNLI Charity Ball.

It is a sociable, dressed-up sort of weekend and one of the busiest of Galway’s autumn — if you want to be at the ticketed events rather than just soaking up the street atmosphere, book through the festival site well ahead.

Ballinasloe’s October Fair is one of Europe’s oldest and largest horse fairs, with a documented history reaching back to the eighteenth century and local tradition claiming far older roots. Around 80,000 visitors come through the east Galway town across the week, many of them returning year after year.

The heart of it is the Fair Green, where hundreds of dealers gather with their horses and ponies and do business the old way — watching the haggling, the trotting-out and the slapping of hands is the real spectacle, and you need no interest in buying to enjoy it. Around the trading, the town fills out with a festival: traditional music everywhere, tug-of-war, bareback riding displays, a carnival and street traders selling almost anything.

It is a working fair rather than a polished festival, and that rawness is exactly its appeal. The streets and Fair Green are free to wander; expect crowds, mud if it rains, and a town operating at full tilt.

Baboró is Ireland’s flagship international arts festival made exclusively for children and families, and 2026 is a milestone year — the festival turns 30. For ten days in October, venues across Galway city and county host work created specifically for young audiences, spanning theatre, dance, music, puppetry, literature and visual art.

What makes Baboró special is that nothing about it is a scaled-down adult festival: companies from Ireland and abroad bring shows designed from the ground up for children, from toddlers through to teens, and the festival has built an international reputation for the quality of that programming over three decades.

If you’re visiting Galway with children during mid-term season, this is the event to build the trip around. The full 2026 programme is announced closer to the festival — sign up to the newsletter on the festival site or check back in early autumn, as popular shows book out once tickets are released.

Billing itself as Ireland’s largest comedy festival, the Galway Comedy Festival packs seven nights of stand-up and comic oddities into the city in the run-up to the October bank holiday — the same week Galway leans into Halloween, which makes for a lively few days to be in town.

The first names confirmed for 2026 set the tone: Dara Ó Briain brings his new show RE:Creation, joined by Taskmaster favourite Mike Wozniak, Irish stand-up Emma Doran (who has already added a second show by demand), Paddy McDonnell and Nurse Georgie Carroll. The full programme, spread across venues around the city, is announced in early September.

Individual shows are ticketed separately, and the bigger names sell quickly once the programme drops, so it’s worth signing up to the festival newsletter and booking early if a particular act is the reason you’re travelling.

TULCA is Galway’s annual festival of contemporary visual art, staging new exhibitions and commissions across multiple venues in the city and county each November. The 2026 edition — the festival’s 24th — is titled Veruca Salt and is curated by artist and curator Sinéad Keogh, founder of Dublin’s Soul Noir festival of the dark arts.

Keogh’s edition reflects on fifty years of punk: its DIY ethos, its resistance, and its mark on culture and society. The curatorial focus is on artists working outside conventional structures and on collaboration, collective action and community engagement — expect work that is rawer and more argumentative than a polite gallery survey.

For a visitor, TULCA is a good reason to be in Galway in the quiet season, threading exhibitions through galleries and other spaces across the city. Venue details and the artist list are published on the festival site closer to opening.

Galway marks Ireland’s national holiday with a four-day festival from 14 to 17 March 2027, building to the main parade on St Patrick’s Day itself, 17 March. The parade steps off at 11am and takes over an hour to wind through the city centre, running from University Road across the Salmon Weir Bridge to Eglinton Street, past the viewing stand at Eyre Square and on to Prospect Hill. Galway City Council says up to 3,000 participants will take part, with the 2027 theme announced as “Legends and Rising Stars”.

There is more to it than parade day. Eyre Square becomes the heart of the festival, with three days of free outdoor concerts and entertainment: Saturday leans into indie music, Sunday is given over to family-friendly programming with circus performers and young bands, and the days around the parade bring traditional Irish music and street performance.

Everything in the square is free and open to all, which makes the weekend an easy one for families. The parade route lines up early, so pick a spot along Eyre Street or near the square in good time.