What's On in Offaly

Named for the old Irish saying, That Beats Banagher marks its thirteenth year in 2026 with a weekend built around Ireland’s craft traditions. The Barrack Yard is the centre of it all, where the Forged in Ireland collective of blacksmiths, bladesmiths and knifemakers stage live forging demonstrations, the fast-paced Battle of the Blacksmiths chopping competition and Sunday’s Golden Anvil Challenge, while the Shannon Iron Smelters recreate the ancient process of smelting iron from ore.

Beyond the forge, traditional artisans work in clay, stone, wood, straw and willow, and there’s a Junior Blacksmith Corner for children, a heritage walk with a local historian taking in Fort Eliza and Banagher Bridge, a pop-up bookshop and an outdoor family cinema night on the Saturday, weather permitting.

Banagher sits right on the Shannon in west Offaly, an easy detour from Clonmacnoise or Birr. The full programme and booking details are on the festival website.

Running since 1968, Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival is one of the longest-running festivals of its kind in Ireland, and it suits its setting: Birr’s Georgian streets and squares were made for a festival that celebrates heritage and vintage culture. Over nine days the town fills with visual arts trails, theatre and film, live music, street theatre and pop-up performers, alongside markets, parade days with a vintage theme, and a long tail of community and pub events.

It is very much a whole-town affair — organised by local volunteers and spread across venues, shops and streets rather than a single site — so a wander through the town centre during festival week turns up something at nearly every corner.

Birr Castle Demesne, with its Great Telescope and gardens, is on the doorstep and makes an easy pairing for a day trip. Ticketed shows are booked through the festival website, where the full programme is published.

The Tullamore Show, incorporating the FBD National Livestock Show, is Ireland’s premier agricultural event, and it packs a remarkable amount into a single Sunday. The country’s best cattle, sheep and equine breeders compete for national honours, and around the livestock rings there are more than 1,000 competitions in everything from home crafts to horticulture, plus some 700 trade stands covering farm machinery, food and rural life in general.

Around 60,000 people come for the day, which tells you this is much more than a farmers’ gathering — it is one of the biggest days out in the midlands calendar, with plenty for families and the merely curious. Even if you have never judged a heifer in your life, the scale, the animals and the food halls make it a genuinely enjoyable spectacle.

Expect traffic into Tullamore to be slow on the morning of the show, and go early. Details and tickets are on the show website.

On the evening of 12 August 2026 a total solar eclipse crosses Iceland and Spain, and from Ireland the Sun will appear dramatically covered — the organisers at Birr Castle promise a deep partial view with up to 92–98% of the Sun obscured. There are few more fitting places in Ireland to watch it than Birr, home of the Great Telescope, the largest in the world for over seventy years.

The event runs from 5pm to 8.30pm and includes a train journey through the demesne to the Great Telescope, a talk from an astrophysics expert, eclipse glasses for safe viewing and a solar-filtered telescope, along with access to the Science Centre, treehouse playground and family activities such as face painting. If clouds spoil the view, a live feed of the eclipse is provided instead.

Pre-booking is essential and numbers are limited, so book ahead on the Birr Castle website.

“The Ploughing” needs little introduction in Ireland: for three days each September, a stretch of farmland becomes a temporary town, and in 2026 the 95th National Ploughing Championships return to Screggan, outside Tullamore, for the second consecutive year. At its heart are the national ploughing competitions themselves — conventional and reversible classes contested with real intensity — but most visitors come for everything around them.

That means an enormous trade exhibition, indoors and out, covering machinery, food, fashion and just about every strand of rural life, plus livestock displays and long-running traditions like the brown bread baking competition. It is as much a social occasion as an agricultural one, and a fascinating day out even for visitors with no connection to farming.

Book admission online in advance to guarantee entry — children under 12 go free with a paying adult — and follow the signposted traffic plans, as roads around Tullamore are extremely busy all three mornings.

On Friday 18 September, Offaly takes part in Culture Night, the all-island celebration that marks its 21st edition in 2026. From late afternoon until late evening, 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 Offaly’s programme is assembled county-wide rather than centred on one town — expect openings, performances and late hours spread between Tullamore, Birr, Edenderry, Clara and smaller places besides. The format rewards curiosity: pick a town, see what’s open, and wander into buildings and performances you’d normally walk past.

The full Offaly listing is published on the Culture Night website closer to the night, so check it before heading out — the 2026 programme was still coming together over the summer.

Lukers of Shannonbridge has quietly become one of the midlands’ most unlikely gig destinations: a restored old bar on the banks of the Shannon whose Boatyard venue and big top shows have drawn some of Ireland’s biggest touring names. On Saturday 19 September it hosts Gavin James, the Dublin singer-songwriter behind hits like “Nervous” and “Always”, for a night under canvas beside the river.

A big-name show in a village of this size is a different experience from an arena tour — the setting, with Shannonbridge’s eighteenth-century bridge and fortifications a stroll away, is a large part of the draw, and the bar itself is worth arriving early for.

Shannonbridge is about twenty minutes from Athlone and close to Clonmacnoise, so the concert pairs naturally with a day at the monastic site. Tickets are sold through the venue; book ahead, as these big top shows sell strongly.

Founded in 2010, the OFFline Film Festival brings five days of independent cinema to Birr each October, with Birr Theatre & Arts Centre on Oxmantown Mall as its hub. The festival has built its reputation on innovative storytelling and diverse voices from around the globe, giving space to emerging filmmakers alongside established names — the kind of programme where you take a chance on something you have never heard of and are glad you did.

It is a small festival in the best sense: screenings and events happen within a few minutes’ walk of each other in one of Ireland’s finest Georgian towns, and the filmmakers are usually in the room.

Early October is a quiet, pleasant time to visit Birr — the castle demesne is open and the town is at its least busy — so the festival makes a good anchor for a midlands weekend. The 2026 programme and tickets are published on the festival website.

Hullabaloo! is Offaly’s arts festival for children, timed for the October mid-term break and spread across five towns — Tullamore, Birr, Kilcormac, Edenderry and Clara — so most of the county is within a short drive of something on. The 2026 edition runs from Wednesday 28 to Saturday 31 October, filling the half-term with shows and hands-on workshops in music, craft, art, dance and more.

The multi-town format is the festival’s real strength for visiting families: rather than one crowded venue, events pop up in arts centres, libraries and halls around the county, generally pitched at specific age groups so younger and older children each get sessions of their own.

Falling over the Halloween week, it slots neatly alongside pumpkin trails and seasonal events elsewhere in the midlands. The full 2026 programme, with ages and booking details for each event, is published on the festival website nearer the time.