What's On in Roscommon

The award-winning Rose Festival is Castlerea’s big week of the year, billing itself as one of Ireland’s biggest and best family festivals. Over nine days the west Roscommon town fills with live music, colourful parades and community events, with a programme that in the organisers’ own words runs “from fireworks to pony racing, dinosaur shows to outdoor concerts”.

Much of the action centres on the town and Somers Park, where lantern-making and other creative workshops feed into evening celebrations — the park is lit up as darkness falls, and people of all nationalities living locally are invited to bring something of their own culture to the festivities. It is a genuinely community-run affair, and the mix of big tribute acts and small-town spectacle is a large part of its appeal.

Some headline shows are ticketed through the festival website, so check the full programme of events online before you travel and book anything you particularly want to see.

Keadue, the tidy village under Kilronan Mountain where the blind harper and composer Turlough O’Carolan lies buried, gives over a full week each summer to his memory. The festival opens with a summer school from Monday to Friday — classes in harp, fiddle, flute, concertina, bodhrán, set dancing and traditional singing, with nightly sessions in the Harp & Shamrock and a harp recital in Kilronan Castle.

The festival weekend then takes over: harp competitions that draw players from home and abroad, a concert of Mel Mercier’s ‘Sonóir’ with a harp showcase, Téada live in St Ronan’s Hall, drama from Seamus O’Rourke, a festival parade and open-air music from the heritage park. The closing Monday is the most atmospheric of all — a wreath-laying at O’Carolan’s grave, a lecture on his musical legacy, live music on the street and the festival’s famously offbeat door dancing competition.

Street events and the family fun day are free, with the evening concerts ticketed through the festival website.

Now in its fourth year, the Ballaghaderreen Arts Festival has quickly grown into one of Roscommon’s liveliest weeks, with a programme that ranges from stage performances and children’s opera to traditional music nights and hands-on workshops. The 2026 line-up brings some genuinely big names to this small north-west Roscommon town: Phil Coulter plays St Nathy’s Cathedral on Thursday 6 August, and the celebrated Donegal group Altan take the same stage the night before.

Beyond the cathedral concerts there is plenty of range — broadcaster Miriam O’Callaghan discusses her book in Durkin’s on the opening Saturday, and the festival closes with a stand-up comedy night at Edmondstown House on Sunday 9 August. Events for all ages run right through the nine days.

Individual events are ticketed separately, with tickets sold online through the festival website — the cathedral concerts are the ones to book early.

Roscommon Racecourse, just outside the county town, runs ten meetings a year mixing flat and jump racing, and five of them are still to come in 2026. The evening fixtures on Tuesday 4 August, Tuesday 18 August and Monday 31 August carry the track’s summer atmosphere — Horse Racing Ireland notes the evening meetings here are especially popular with locals and tourists alike — before the season winds up with daytime meetings on Monday 28 September and Monday 12 October.

The September meeting is traditionally the classiest of the autumn: the track’s stand-out jump races, the Grade 3 Kilbegnet Novice Chase and the Connaught National Handicap Chase, are usually run at Roscommon in September and draw good horses and big crowds.

The course is a sociable, mid-sized country track with bars, restaurants, free parking and live entertainment after racing. Tickets and fixture details are on the racecourse website.

Running for nearly half a century, the Elphin Agricultural Show is the county’s flagship farming day out, held on the mart grounds and surrounding fields in the heritage town of Elphin. The 2026 show takes place on Saturday 29 August.

This is a proper old-style show with serious breadth: recent editions have run classes for horses, ponies, donkeys, cattle and sheep alongside farm and garden produce, handcrafts, photography, cookery and even poetry, plus a dog show and a string of novelty events, with a substantial prize fund drawing exhibitors from well beyond the county. For visitors it is as good a window into rural Irish life as you will find — prize bulls and show jumping at one end of the field, home baking and children’s pets at the other.

Grounds traditionally open from early morning and the day runs right through, finishing with the show’s famous monster raffle. It is an easy, family-friendly day out — Elphin is around 15 minutes’ drive north of Strokestown.

For a week in September the skies over Lough Key fill with hot air balloons as the Irish Hot Air Ballooning Championships — now in their 54th year — return to Lough Key Forest Park near Boyle. Pilots and crews travel from the US, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany and around Ireland to compete in a series of flying challenges, with launches planned at around 7am and 5pm daily, weather permitting.

It is one of the most photogenic spectacles in the county: mass ascents drifting over the lake, its islands and Castle Island make for an extraordinary sight, and watching is completely free. The park stays fully open through the week, so families can combine balloon-watching with Boda Borg, the zipline course or a boat trip.

Ballooning is entirely weather-dependent and launch times can change at short notice — check the championships website or the park’s social channels on the day, and arrive early around launch windows as traffic management is in place.

Now entering its fourth year, RIFF packs more than forty films into two days at Roscommon Arts Centre, drawing entries from Ireland and well beyond. The programme leans on short film — drama, documentary, comedy, thriller and horror all feature — alongside a screenplay competition covering both shorts and features, so the weekend attracts working filmmakers and writers as much as film fans.

Trophies are handed out across ten categories, from Best Irish Short Film and Best Documentary to an Audience Choice Award and a Best Film prize for work with a Roscommon connection, and the festival prides itself on giving feedback on every entry it receives. A networking strand, RIFF Script to Screen, brings screenwriters and filmmakers together over the weekend.

For visitors it is a compact, sociable festival — everything happens under one roof at the arts centre on Circular Road, a short walk from the centre of Roscommon town, in the same week as the town’s Samhain celebrations.

Roscommon has a better claim on Halloween than almost anywhere: Oweynagat, the Cave of the Cats at Rathcroghan near Tulsk, is described by the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre as the birthplace of Samhain and the home of Halloween. The county marks it with an evening Samhain procession through Roscommon town on Friday 30 October, presented in collaboration with the visitor centre.

In recent years the procession has been a community spectacle in the best sense — lantern and mask-making workshops with local schools feeding into a torchlit parade through the town centre, built around striking sculptural work by professional artists and followed by storytelling and talks at Roscommon Arts Centre. Children and families are very much at the heart of it.

If the procession whets your appetite, Rathcroghan Visitor Centre runs its seasonal Origins of Samhain tours to the entrance of Oweynagat cave in late October — booking opens in mid-September and places go quickly, so reserve ahead through rathcroghan.ie.

Roscommon town’s Christmas Festival weekend returns on 5 and 6 December 2026, and it has grown into one of the county’s most popular family occasions. The heart of it is a Christmas market on the Square — in recent years upwards of thirty stalls of handmade gifts, local produce and seasonal food, with street entertainment and Christmas characters working the crowds.

The other half of the festival is the Enchanted Christmas Trail in Loughnaneane Park, below Roscommon Castle, where twinkling light displays and festive scenes turn the park into a walk-through winter spectacle. Recent editions have added lantern installations made by local schoolchildren, choir performances and a closing fireworks display on the Sunday night.

The whole festival is free to attend, which makes it an easy pre-Christmas day trip — and the market and trail are within a few minutes’ walk of each other, so it works well even on a cold evening. Check the Visit Roscommon website closer to the date for the 2026 programme.