What's On in Louth

Set in some of the Boyne Valley’s loveliest historic buildings, the Boyne Music Festival fills four July days with chamber music, art and conversation. The 2026 theme, Forgotten Spaces, reflects on the structures we inhabit, preserve and neglect, and the programme moves between Townley Hall, Slane Castle and St Peter’s Church of Ireland in Drogheda.

Alongside concerts of classical masterpieces and contemporary work — with artists including Lotte Betts-Dean, Ioana Petcu-Colan and Jacqueline Thomas — there is a screening of Philip Denvir’s documentary on dereliction, Leave Only Footprints, and a photography exhibition of abandoned Irish spaces. Workshops round out the weekend, from a poetry session with Kate Wakeling to a play-along workshop for amateur string players.

Tickets for individual events, including the opening-night dinner at Slane Castle, are booked through the festival website. Note that the venues are spread across the valley on both sides of the Louth–Meath border, so a car makes it much easier to follow the whole programme.

The All-Ireland Poc Fada finals bring one of the GAA’s most unusual spectacles to the Cooley Peninsula each August bank holiday Monday. Competitors puck a sliotar across open mountainside, retracing the legendary journey of Setanta — the boy who became Cú Chulainn — who hit his ball far ahead of him and caught it on his hurley as he crossed these same mountains on his way to join the Red Branch Knights.

The senior hurlers tackle the full five-kilometre circuit in four stages, from An Fhána Mór up to the summit cairn at Carn an Mhadaidh and back down to the finish, while the senior camogie and under-16 competitors play a shorter two-stage course to An Gabhlán and back.

The 2026 finals feature 27 competitors who qualified through their county and provincial rounds. Defending champions Colin Ryan of Limerick and Cork’s Molly Lynch both return — Lynch chasing a remarkable sixth consecutive title, Ryan aiming for his third.

The Boyne Valley International Film Festival returns for its fifth edition with three days of short films from Ireland and around the world, produced by Droichead Arts Centre in partnership with LOVE Drogheda BIDS. The programme includes a Made in the Boyne Valley showcase alongside national, international, documentary and animation strands, with screenings, workshops and awards across the town.

The 2026 guest list is a strong one: This Is England director Shane Meadows joins a Sunday-afternoon panel discussion on working-class voices in and on film, alongside actor Hilda Fay, Thomas Kane Byrne and Aisling O’Mara, while filmmaker Aisling Connolly Byrne features as this year’s Filmmaker in Focus. Saturday is given over to Animation Day at the Arc Cinema, including an exclusive preview of Little Caribou, with a character-design workshop in Drogheda Library on Stockwell Street.

Season tickets and individual screenings are booked through Droichead Arts Centre, and it is worth reserving the panel events ahead — a small booking fee applies.

Knockbridge Vintage Club celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its founding in 2026, which makes this year’s rally and working day a bigger occasion than usual for the village. The club promises a step back in time: a Sunday filled with vintage machinery, good food, music and fun activities for all ages.

Vintage rallies are a staple of the Irish rural summer, and the “working day” in the title is the draw here — machinery from another era seen doing what it was built for, rather than sitting polished behind a rope. It is an easy-going, good-natured sort of day out, and the anniversary celebrations should add to the atmosphere.

Knockbridge sits a short drive south-west of Dundalk, so the rally combines well with a day exploring mid-Louth. It is a community-run event, with details shared through the club’s social media channels in the run-up to the day.

Carlingford’s connection with Thomas D’Arcy McGee — the Young Irelander born in the town who went on to become a Father of Canadian Confederation — gives this late-summer school its starting point. Over two days at the Four Seasons Hotel and Carlingford Heritage Centre, speakers and audiences take on a contemporary theme; for 2026 it is Culture, Identity and Inclusion in a turbulent world.

The programme asks how belonging is shaped, contested and renewed at a time when democratic societies are being tested by polarisation, conflict and disinformation, and how identities can coexist within shared civic frameworks — with a particular eye on how inclusion on the island of Ireland can move beyond rhetoric. McGee’s journey from Carlingford to Canadian statesman is used as the entry point into that wider conversation about pluralism and democracy.

The full programme and ticket details are still to be announced, and medieval Carlingford is well worth the stay in its own right.

Boyne TradFest turns Drogheda into one big session for a September weekend: more than fifty artists play a dozen traditional music sessions on a trail through the town, with recitals in Drogheda Library and Highlanes Gallery and céilí dancing to live musicians along the way.

Saturday night’s headline concert brings At The Racket to Droichead Arts Centre (€18, doors 7.30pm), and for players there are three-hour masterclass workshops with some of Ireland’s most esteemed musicians and tutors, covering everything from harp, fiddle and flute to uilleann pipes, button accordion, bodhrán and concertina.

If you fancy stretching the trip, the Boyne Valley Trails walking festival runs the same week (13–20 September), adding guided heritage and nature walks around Drogheda and the valley by day. The full TradFest programme and workshop booking are on the festival website.

As night falls over the October bank holiday weekend, the Lú Festival of Light projects Ireland’s myths onto Drogheda’s most iconic heritage buildings. The 2026 edition brings new stories, new legends and brand-new animations: the bell tower of the Old Abbey, St Peter’s Church and the medieval St Laurence’s Gate each become canvases for tales of ancient gods, goddesses, creatures and legendary mortal heroes.

Around the illuminations runs a street festival of fire performers, stilt-walkers and roaming characters, alongside a schedule of ticketed events. The festival launches on the Friday night with the Drogheda Credit Union Spooks Parade, a cross-community arts project led by Droichead Arts Centre that brings primary schools, Droichead Youth Theatre and Drogheda Special Olympics onto the streets in ghoulish style — other children and families are welcome to join the back of the parade.

The projections and street entertainment are free and family-friendly; check the festival website for this year’s shows and ticketed events.