What's On in Laois

Forest Fest has grown quickly into one of the midlands’ best-loved music weekends: an award-winning independent festival that fills the small village of Emo with live music, comedy, street food, craft drinks and arts for three days each July. The 2026 headliners are Madness, James and Echo & The Bunnymen, with The Boomtown Rats, The Charlatans, The Undertones, Deacon Blue, The Coronas, Paul Brady and Feeder also on the bill.

Beyond the main stage, the Forest Fleadh stage carries the trad and folk end of things — Kíla, Dervish and Camille O’Sullivan among them — while the new Kickin’ Up Dust arena adds country and Americana with Nathan Carter and Hermitage Green, plus a barn disco with a DJ booth built from a repurposed combine harvester.

Last year’s festival sold out and early ticket tiers for 2026 are already gone, so book promptly. Camping, campervan pitches and pre-pitched glamping are available, and festival buses run from Dublin, Kilkenny, Tullamore, Portlaoise and surrounding towns.

The Ossory Show has been running since 1898, when the first show was held at Donaghmore; it moved to Rathdowney in 1915 and has been staged at Coolfin since 2000. Now in its 128th year, it remains a classic one-day country show: livestock competitions, local produce and crafts, and prize-giving that celebrates the best of Irish farming life.

Alongside the traditional classes there is plenty for a casual visitor. The Ossory Truck Show returns with gleaming vintage and modern rigs from the Irish haulage scene, and the vintage section includes displays of old cars, trucks and tractors plus working demonstrations of corn cutting and threshing from days gone by. A dog show and Best Dressed competition round out the day.

Gates open to the public at 10am and admission is pay-on-the-gate, with free entry for children — an easy, unfussy family day out in the south Laois countryside.

The Folly Festival turns the grounds of the ruined medieval castle in Cullohill, a small village in south Laois, into one of Ireland’s more unusual music venues for a weekend. The 2026 bill is headed by Kilkenny pop singer Robert Grace, with Fleetwood Mac tribute Mack Fleetwood, trad-rockers Ruaile Buaile, Monroe Band, Sweet Freedom, Dear Willow and more across the two days.

It is deliberately small and local in feel — the kind of festival where tickets are sold in the village shops as well as online. Saturday daytime is built around families, with a baking competition, a dog show and other village events before the music takes over; Sunday’s programme runs from 4pm.

The weekend ticket is notably good value, and each paying adult can bring up to two children under 14 free, which makes it one of the easier festivals in the region to do with kids.

Run by the Irish Steam Preservation Society for over sixty years, the National Steam Rally is the oldest vintage steam show in Ireland, and the 62nd edition takes over the parkland of Stradbally Hall for the August bank holiday weekend. Expect working steam engines in full puff alongside vintage tractors, oil engines and classic cars and trucks, with heritage displays and demonstrations of traditional crafts like butter and bread making.

The set-piece moment is the Steam & Vintage Parade through Stradbally town on the Saturday afternoon at 3.30pm, when the engines leave the field and rumble through The Square. Back on site there is live country music across all three days — Philomena Begley, Declan Nerney and Michael English are on the 2026 bill — all included in admission.

It is a strong family weekend too, with a funfair, pet farm, dog show and kids’ areas. Weekend camping is available from Friday to Tuesday but must be booked in advance.

Electric Picnic 2026 is sold out — all c. 80,000 tickets went within hours of release last September, so don’t travel to Stradbally without one, and treat anything outside the festival’s official resale channels with suspicion.

For the lucky ticket-holders, this is Ireland’s biggest music and arts festival, filling the parkland of Stradbally Hall over the late-August weekend. Since 2004 it has grown from a boutique one-dayer into a small temporary city, and its reputation was built on everything beyond the main stages as much as the headliners: comedy, theatre, food villages, late-night woodland venues and the arts trails that give the weekend its character.

For everyone else, Stradbally itself is worth knowing about that weekend: the village sits at the centre of the event and its roads get extremely busy from Thursday onwards, so plan around it if you’re touring the area.

Now in its second year, the Lovely Laois Homecoming Festival is a weekend of music, literature, art, photography, workshops, heritage talks and community celebrations staged in venues across the county. The idea is a simple one: gather Laois people home from wherever they have scattered, reunite family and neighbours, and show off the best of the county to newcomers — including help for visitors tracing Laois ancestry.

The centrepiece is the Gala Dinner at the Midlands Park Hotel in Portlaoise on the Saturday night (€69, booking required). Around it sits a spread of smaller events, from singer-songwriter Charlie McGettigan at Preston House in Abbeyleix on Saturday afternoon to a country music concert to close the weekend on Sunday.

Events are ticketed individually, with most bookable in advance through the festival website — worth doing for the gala dinner in particular.

Held on the second Sunday of September every year, the Clonaslee Livestock and Produce Show is one of the season’s premier agricultural shows of its kind, now in its 71st year. The village sits at the foot of the Slieve Bloom Mountains in the north-west corner of Laois, and the show has been part of its September rhythm for seven decades.

The formula is the classic one, celebrating agriculture, livestock and produce with what the organisers call “a little bit of culture and tradition” alongside: judging classes and competitions combined with entertainment, exhibitions and excitement, so there is something for every age in the family.

Coming at the quieter end of the show season, it pairs well with a walk in the Slieve Blooms the same weekend. Admission is charged at the gate, children under 16 go free and parking is free.

On Friday 18 September, Laois joins the all-island Culture Night, the annual national moment — run by the Arts Council with local authorities — when cultural venues of every kind stay open late and lay on special programming, all of it free by design.

The Laois programme is coordinated locally and typically spreads across the county rather than clustering in one town: expect libraries, arts venues, studios and heritage buildings in Portlaoise and the surrounding towns opening their doors for performances, exhibitions, workshops and readings into the evening. Part of the pleasure is following your nose from one open door to the next with no fixed plan.

The full county listing is published on the Culture Night website closer to the night itself — the 2026 programme was still being assembled over the summer — so check it before heading out to see what’s on near you.