What's On in Kildare

For a week at the end of July, Newbridge College becomes an unlikely international gathering point as scholars, poets and musicians assemble for the Hopkins Festival, a long-standing celebration of the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and his Kildare connections.

The programme is a genuine mix of the academic and the accessible: lectures on Hopkins, poetry and philosophy sit alongside creative writing and translation workshops, art exhibitions, an international poetry celebration and a field trip to the early Christian high cross at Moone. The 2026 edition opens with a reception featuring flamenco music, and the celebrity concert brings Swedish pianist Hans Pålsson to Newbridge to play Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert.

You don’t need to commit to the full week — day tickets and single-lecture tickets are sold alongside the full festival pass, so it’s easy to dip in for an afternoon of talks or just the concert. Full details and the programme are on the festival website.

Taste of Kildare is the county’s showcase weekend for its food and drink scene, taking over Naas Racecourse for two days in mid-August. The line-up runs from wagyu beef to craft beers, with tastings, workshops and live cooking demonstrations from leading chefs alongside stands from local artisan producers.

It’s built as a full day out rather than a straight food fair. A lively market gathers makers and small businesses from around the county, live music runs across both days, and children are well catered for with a pet farm, face painting and outdoor games.

General admission is €15, and gates run from noon to 8pm on Saturday and noon to 6pm on Sunday. Naas Racecourse sits on Tipper Road on the edge of Naas town; tickets are sold through the festival website.

The KPMG Women’s Irish Open moves to a new home in 2026: the K Club at Straffan, where the tournament will be played over the Palmer South Course from 27 to 30 August. The course is an inland links-style layout with dune mounding and dramatic rock features, and it gives one of the flagship weeks of the Ladies European Tour a fittingly big stage.

Lottie Woad, the 2025 champion, returns to defend her title. The event has grown quickly in recent years and now draws upwards of 40,000 spectators across the week, so expect a proper championship atmosphere rather than a quiet day’s golf-watching.

Straffan is an easy reach from Dublin, Naas and Maynooth, which makes this a very doable day trip. Tickets are sold through the tournament website, where practical spectator information is published in the run-up to the championship.

The Irish Champions Festival is Irish flat racing’s championship weekend, run over two days at two courses — Leopardstown on Saturday 12 September and the Curragh on Sunday 13 September. The Curragh leg is one of the richest race days on the Irish calendar: four Group 1 races on an eight-race card worth nearly €2.5 million, headed by the Comer Group International Irish St Leger, the fifth and final Irish Classic of the season. The Flying Five sprint and two of the year’s top juvenile contests, the National Stakes and the Moyglare Stud Stakes, share the bill.

It’s also a genuinely family-friendly day. Under-18s go free, and the Moyglare Kids Zone lays on face painters, caricaturists and children’s entertainment, with a VR jockey-cam experience returning after its 2025 debut.

If the date doesn’t suit, the Curragh’s season runs on with further fixtures in late September (26–27), October and a closing meeting on 1 November. Tickets for Champions Festival day are sold through the Curragh website.

On Friday 18 September, Kildare takes part in Culture Night, the all-island celebration that marks its 21st edition in 2026. From 4pm until late, venues across the island — from rural villages to city centres — open their doors for thousands of free events, and everything on the night is free of charge by design.

Culture Night is brought together by the Arts Council working with local authorities, so Kildare’s programme is assembled county-wide rather than centred on a single town — worth remembering in a county whose cultural life is spread between Naas, Newbridge, Maynooth, Athy and Kildare town. The format rewards curiosity: pick an area, see what’s open, and wander into buildings and performances you’d normally walk past.

The full Kildare listing is published on the Culture Night website closer to the night, so check it before heading out — the 2026 programme was still in its open-call stage over the summer.

Naas Racecourse’s October weekend is its big autumn set piece: two consecutive days of flat racing on 10 and 11 October. Saturday features the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Birdcatcher Premier Nursery Handicap, and Sunday stages the Irish EBF Auction Series Race Final — a very popular weekend at the Kildare track and a fine excuse for an autumn overnight in Naas.

The course sits just outside Naas town, so it’s easy to pair a day’s racing with an evening in the town’s pubs and restaurants.

If you’re visiting at another time, Naas races year-round: a Juvenile Day on 17 September showcases young horses, jumping returns on 8 November with the Listed Brown Lad Handicap Hurdle, and a Christmas Party Raceday on 14 December rounds off the year. Fixtures and tickets are on the racecourse website.

Every autumn, Athy gathers polar historians, authors and enthusiasts from around the world for the Shackleton Autumn School, a weekend devoted to the life and legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton — the Antarctic explorer born here in County Kildare. The 2026 school runs from 16 to 18 October, hosted by the town’s Shackleton Experience, the only institution in the world dedicated to the explorer.

The format blends expert lectures with documentary screenings, interactive workshops, commemorative events and exhibitions of polar artefacts. It has built a loyal international following over a quarter of a century, and the mix of serious scholarship and small-town warmth is a big part of why people come back.

Athy itself is an easy stop on the River Barrow in south Kildare, and the Shackleton museum is worth a visit in its own right whenever you’re passing. Booking for the Autumn School programme opens through the Shackleton Experience website.

Punchestown bills itself as the definitive home of Irish jump racing, and the Premiere Weekend on 21 and 22 November is when its winter season begins in earnest. The two days deliver a Grade 1 double — the Morgiana Hurdle and the iconic John Durkan Memorial Chase — backed by a full supporting card of hurdles, chases and National Hunt flat races. With the season just under way, it’s a first serious look at horses being aimed at Cheltenham in the spring.

Racing runs to a compact winter schedule, starting late morning and wrapping up by mid-afternoon, and the course is around 30 to 40 minutes from Dublin, just outside Naas.

Punchestown’s calendar runs right through the winter if the dates don’t suit: Flat In Town on 15 September, the Jumps Are Back meeting on 13–14 October, midweek racing on 9 November, a Festive Treat Day on 8 December and a New Year’s Eve countdown raceday on 31 December — all before the five-day Punchestown Festival returns in spring.