What's On in Westmeath

Athlone’s summer festival takes its cue from the town’s Viking past on the Shannon, and 2026 runs on a “Fire and Water” theme. It opens on the Friday evening with a street theatre parade from Golden Island — Vikings, fire breathers, stilt walkers and giant puppets — followed by a free outdoor concert.

Over the weekend a Viking village sets up under the White Railway Bridge with living-history displays and demonstrations, while the Woollen Mills Market brings more than 55 craft and food traders to Athlone Castle and St Bernard’s Quay. On the water there is dragon boat and kayak racing, and Viking Tours runs Shannon cruises from behind the castle throughout — tickets onboard or online.

The organisers pitch the programme squarely at families, with circus skills workshops, family yoga and children’s activities alongside the spectacle, and the street events and concerts are free. Events run across the town centre and riverfront, spilling into the bank holiday Monday.

The Hill of Uisneach, the mythological centre of Ireland where the five ancient provinces were said to meet, marks Lughnasadh — the old festival of the harvest — with a guided evening on the hill. The 2026 gathering leaves the visitor centre at 6pm and winds up to the summit, where a fire ceremony is the heart of the night: you are invited to bring a small piece of wood, a flower or a leaf to add to the fire with your intentions.

Along the way there are ancient Irish sports — hurling and Brollaidheacht, the old elbow-and-collar wrestling — and, weather permitting, sunset over the midlands from the top. The evening winds down back at the visitor centre with stories and music around the fire, finishing about 10pm.

It is a real hillwalk on uneven farmland, so wear proper footwear and dress for the weather; moderate fitness is needed and dogs are not allowed. Book ahead through the Uisneach website, as tickets are limited.

Art Faoin Aer — literally “art in the open air” — turns the lakeside grounds of Belvedere House into a working outdoor studio for a weekend. Around 60 artists set up across the estate and create work live and against the clock, from traditional landscape painting to abstract and experimental pieces, with the results judged in a plein air competition.

For visitors, the pleasure is in wandering the gardens and watching paintings take shape in real time, then coming back later to see how they turned out. Artists work from 10am to 5pm on the Saturday and 10am to 2pm on the Sunday, so the Saturday gives the fuller day of it.

There is also a programme of hands-on workshops — acrylic painting, printmaking and children’s craft sessions, priced around €45 and booked through the festival website. Belvedere’s walled garden, woodland walks and lough shore make it an easy event to pair with a full day out.

Moate has been holding an agricultural show since 1839, which makes this one of the oldest shows in Ireland, and the 2026 edition keeps the classic country-show formula. The day is built around exhibition classes — horses and ponies, cattle, sheep and poultry — with judging running through the day at Browne’s Fields on the Dublin road, just outside the town centre.

Away from the livestock rings there are home industries classes, the traditional showcase of baking, preserves and crafts, along with children’s classes, live music and plenty more around the grounds. It is the kind of event where the competition is taken seriously but the day out is the point.

For visitors it is a genuine slice of midlands rural life rather than something staged for tourists, and an easy Sunday stop: Moate sits on the old Dublin–Galway road between Athlone and Kilbeggan, so it pairs well with either.

Kilbeggan’s compact country racecourse — billing itself “the heart of Ireland, the soul of racing” — closes its 2026 season with two fixtures on consecutive days: the Autumn Harvest race meeting on Thursday 3 September and the End of Season Celebration on Friday 4 September, with the first race around 4pm each day.

The course runs ten meetings a year and jump racing here has a distinctly sociable, small-town flavour — evening starts, a friendly crowd and food and drink options the track says offer something for everyone. If you are in the area earlier in the summer, there are also evening fixtures on Saturday 8 August and Friday 21 August.

Kilbeggan sits just off the M6 in the south of the county, and the town is also home to Kilbeggan Distillery, which makes a natural double bill with an afternoon at the races. Tickets and package deals can be booked in advance through the racecourse website.

Culture Night is Ireland’s annual island-wide celebration of arts, culture and creativity: on one Friday evening each September, venues everywhere open their doors late and put on free events, from 4pm until late into the night. The twenty-first edition falls on Friday 18 September 2026.

In Westmeath the programme is coordinated through the county’s arts office, with an open call each year for artists, community groups and venues to take part, so the line-up ranges from galleries and libraries to churches, studios and spaces that are rarely open to visitors. Athlone and Mullingar carry the busiest programmes, with events scattered through smaller towns and villages too.

Everything is free and most events need no ticket, though smaller venues may be first-come, first-served. The detailed Westmeath listings are published on the Culture Night website closer to the night, where you can browse events by location and plan an evening of wandering between them.

Belvedere House, the Georgian estate on the shore of Lough Ennell just south of Mullingar, gives itself over to Halloween for the last week of October. Billed as the Home of Halloween, the 2026 event runs each evening from 24 to 31 October, roughly 5pm to 9pm — so this is the estate’s gardens and parkland after dark rather than a daytime visit.

Belvedere has form here: its Halloween programmes in recent years have been firmly family-oriented, built around a treasure trail through a “ghoulish garden” to a witches’ lair, with face painting, spooky activities and a goody bag for children at the end. The full 2026 programme was still being finalised at the time of writing, so check the estate’s website before travelling.

It is an outdoor event on a large estate, so wrap up and dress for late-October weather. Booking is through Belvedere’s online booking system, and the house can be contacted directly for details.

The Christmas pantomime is a fixture of the winter calendar at Mullingar Arts Centre, and for 2026 the title is Snow White, running from 4 to 29 December — a proper month-long season rather than a short visit, which tells you something about the local appetite for it.

Panto here is a big community production in the best sense: broad comedy, songs, villains to boo and a packed house of families, and it has become as much a part of a midlands Christmas as the lights on the town’s streets. If you are staying in or near Mullingar over the festive period, it is an easy and genuinely local night out.

The arts centre is right in the centre of Mullingar. Performances across a run like this typically sell strongly, so book ahead through the arts centre’s website or box office rather than chancing the door.