What's On in Kilkenny

For ten days each August, Kilkenny’s medieval city becomes one big stage. The Arts Festival programmes classical and contemporary music, opera, theatre, dance, literature and visual art across historic venues, with St Canice’s Cathedral and the Watergate Theatre among the settings — the festival describes its offering as a mix of heritage and contemporary creativity, and the buildings are half the pleasure.

Highlights announced for 2026 include Michael Gallen’s new opera The Curing Line, a concert from Welsh art-pop musician Cate Le Bon, The Gesualdo Six performing Death of Gesualdo, and Chamber Choir Ireland’s Forgotten Peoples programme. Ticket bundles are available for some strands, and the AKA fringe festival runs alongside through August, adding a looser, more experimental programme around the city.

Individual events are ticketed through the festival website, so book ahead for anything you particularly want to see. Kilkenny is compact, and it is an easy city to cover on foot between venues.

Graiguenamanagh, a small town on the River Barrow in south Kilkenny, styles itself Ireland’s town of books, and for one weekend in late August it leans fully into the title. Bookshops and stalls spill through the streets, and visiting authors give talks, sign books and share stories over the three days.

The 2026 line-up spans crime writers, a fantasy author specialising in dyslexia-friendly books, and children’s writers, so it is not a solemn literary affair — browsing is the main event, and the organisers bill the town’s medieval streets as a bibliophile’s paradise for the weekend.

The festival is free to visit, which makes it an easy add-on to a day exploring the Barrow Valley: the town sits on the riverside walking and boating route beneath Brandon Hill, and Duiske Abbey is right in the centre. It also shares a weekend with the Iverk Show across the county in Piltown, so a Saturday could take in both.

The Iverk Show has been held since 1826, and the 2026 show in Piltown, south Kilkenny, is its 200th year — a genuine landmark for Ireland’s oldest agricultural show. Around 25,000 people come for the day, and the programme is the full country-show experience: classes for in-hand and riding horses, show jumping, cattle, sheep and poultry, alongside home produce competitions and a display of vintage cars, tractors and machinery.

The bicentenary edition has drawn serious backing — ABP’s Beef Bulls of the Future championships bring a €37,700 prize fund and pedigree cattle from across Ireland — but it wears it lightly. Between the livestock rings there are 300 to 400 trade stands, a food market marquee, fashion shows on the famous Iverk catwalk, a tug-o-war and a free children’s play area.

It is a one-day event on a Saturday, and a good-weather crowd of this size fills the roads around Piltown, so arrive early. The Town of Books festival runs the same weekend in Graiguenamanagh if you are making a Kilkenny weekend of it.

Rás na mBan is Ireland’s top international women’s stage race, and 2026 is a landmark edition: the 20th anniversary of the race and ten years since it made Kilkenny its home. Over five days and six stages the peloton covers more than 400km, with a route redesigned for the anniversary — an opening stage from Kilkenny to Freshford, new stages around Gorey in Wexford and Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary, and a summit finish on Mount Leinster’s steep Corrabut Gap in Carlow.

For spectators the best day is the last. The race returns to Kilkenny city on the final Sunday for its traditional double bill: a short time trial around the walls of Kilkenny Castle, followed by the fastest stage of the week, a high-speed circuit race through the city centre where the overall champion is crowned.

Top international teams race against Ireland’s club riders, who have their own green Best Irish Rider jersey to fight for. The full route and stage timings are on the race website.

Kilkenny is home to Cartoon Saloon, the Academy Award-nominated animation studio behind films like Wolfwalkers, and Kilkenny Animated is the weekend the city celebrates that. Hosted by Cartoon Saloon together with BAFTA-winning Lighthouse Studios, it calls itself a small animation festival with a big appetite for visual storytelling — a mix of headline talks, film screenings, hands-on workshops and sketching tours through the medieval streets.

The programme is built for more than industry insiders. Alongside sessions for animation professionals and students, there are events pitched at anyone who loves drawing, cartoons and illustrated stories, spread across venues in the city centre with the Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel as the main stage.

The 2026 festival runs Friday to Sunday in September, with support from Fáilte Ireland and Kilkenny County Council. Tickets are sold through the festival website, where the full programme is published — worth checking early if there is a particular workshop or speaker you want, as sessions are intimate by design.

Gowran Park, a short drive east of Kilkenny city, stages this two-day National Hunt fixture as the highlight of its autumn calendar. Friday’s card opens the jumps action, and Saturday is the big one: the Grade 2 PwC Champion Chase, supported by two more graded races in the Joe Mac Novice Hurdle and the Like-A-Butterfly Novice Chase, as the Irish jumps season builds towards winter.

For a visitor it is an easy, unfussy day at the races — a country track with graded-quality racing, and a far more relaxed way to see top Irish jumpers than the big festival meetings.

If the dates don’t suit, Gowran’s season continues with a flat finale on 19 October and a National Hunt Finale meeting on 7 November, before the course’s famous Thyestes Chase day comes around in late January. Tickets and fixture details are on the Gowran Park website.

Savour Kilkenny celebrates its 20th festival in 2026, and it has grown into one of Ireland’s biggest food weekends — over 74,500 people came in 2025. The heart of it is the Festival Quarter on The Parade, set against Kilkenny Castle, where entry is free: live cookery demonstrations from well-known Irish chefs, family entertainment, a Brewers & Distillers Marquee, and a weekend market of around 100 artisan producers and street food vendors from all over Ireland on the Saturday and Sunday.

Around the free core runs a ticketed programme — dining events in the city’s restaurants from the Thursday, drinks tastings and workshops — with tickets on sale from July through the festival website. The bank holiday Monday adds a gentler strand of wellness talks and workshops.

It is a genuinely family-friendly festival, with children’s activities across the weekend, but the October bank holiday is Kilkenny at its busiest, so book accommodation and restaurant events well ahead.

Kilkenomics bills itself as the world’s first economics and comedy festival, and the formula has made it a November fixture in Kilkenny: put economists, financial analysts and media commentators on stage with professional stand-up comedians, and let the comedians keep the jargon honest. One much-quoted description sums it up as “John Maynard Keynes meets Lenny Bruce”.

The 2026 edition runs across a November weekend with around 70 contributors and 50 events over three days, staged in venues around the city. Sessions range over whatever is making the world “weirder, faster” that year — markets, politics, technology and money in ordinary life — and the tone is sharp but accessible; you don’t need to know a bond from a bailout to enjoy it.

Tickets are sold through the festival website, where weekend Golden Ticket passes are already on sale ahead of the individual programme. Early November is a quiet, atmospheric time in Kilkenny, which is part of the festival’s charm.

Yulefest is Kilkenny’s Christmas season rolled into one festival. Its centrepiece is the Christmas market on The Parade, with Kilkenny Castle as the backdrop: free to enter, it opens on Saturday 28 November with Santa’s arrival, runs every weekend until 20 December (Saturdays to 8pm, Sundays to 6pm), and then daily through Christmas week until 23 December.

Around the market the programme spreads across the city and county — Santa experiences, music concerts, art workshops, a live music stage at weekends and family entertainment, plus one-off fixtures like the Medieval Mile Run and a festive movie night in early December. Market browsing costs nothing, and there are plenty of places to sit with festive food and drink; tickets for the individual events go on sale between August and November through the festival website.

Kilkenny’s compact medieval centre suits Christmas shopping on foot, and a weekend visit can pair the market with the castle and the city’s own shops. Expect the December weekends to be the busiest.

On New Year’s Day the north Kilkenny town of Castlecomer starts the year with a race run in wellington boots, a tradition it has kept since 1981. It began in 1978 when a group of local men decided to run off the Christmas excess in the only footwear they owned that suited a cross-country course, and it has grown into one of Ireland’s great quirky sporting occasions — the 2026 race drew 674 participants.

The format is gloriously simple: run, jog or walk the 4km Kiltown Circuit in your wellies. Serious club runners chase the male and female titles, veterans have their own categories, and everyone else comes for the fancy dress and float parade, led by a celebrity “Wellie Race Personality” as grand marshal. All proceeds go to charity, and the race has supported a long list of causes over the decades.

It is a fine excuse to be in Kilkenny for New Year: spectating on the street is part of the fun even if you don’t fancy 4km in rubber boots on the first of January.