Omid Djalili, Jack Dee, Dylan Moran, and Rich Hall are some of the biggest and best-known names in stand-up, and these four are not to be missed at Galway Comedy Festival 2025.
Dylan Moran has few, if any, equals in comedy right now, and not only is he playing Galway city for the Festival, this BAFTA and Perrier award-winning comedian is also bringing his new show, Dolla Ho, to the Raheen Woods Hotel, Athenry on Thursday, October 23rd at 7pm.
Dolla Ho is a distillation of the very best material created and explored on the 2024 Work In Progress Wander, where Dylan travelled the highways and byways of Ireland, playing 50 shows in 35 towns.
Dolla Ho will see the Navan man examining our obsession with our phones, social media, and doom scrolling, what he calls “new forms of misery”, resulting in “looking at the universe and everything for an incredibly constrained, frightened, small, petty viewpoint,” as he told RTÉ’s Oliver Callan Show.
Instead of remaining frightened, Moran wants his comedy to shake us out of such fears and get audiences laughing “because you’ve described what life feels like right now”.
Omid Djalili is making a very welcome return to Galway and is on a similar mission to tell it like it is when he brings his new stand-up show, NAMASTE, to the Town Hall Theatre on Tuesday, October 21, at 7pm.
“I’ve always tried to be nice about people, but this time I can’t,” he told The Birmingham Press. “The world is in such a terrible state. At the end of the day, the whole purpose of comedy is not just making people laugh. When you talk about the means to an end, the means is comedy, but the end is to actually make sense of what’s going on. And because I’m from the Middle East, I feel I do have some answers.”
In this show, the Persian comedy star taps into his anger to deliver sharp, funny takes on today’s messed-up world. No government is safe, no tyrant goes unchallenged, and the audience is guaranteed to laugh non-stop.
“Omid is a palette cleanser,” Leftlion.co.uk said. “His comedic talent is to have us laughing at what made us despair last week. Namaste is a thought-provoking show which hits the spot. Omid is not only not afraid to speak about the world’s ills, but he also manages to find appropriate comedy in it. This he uses to educate and, most importantly, inspire, giving hope.”
Jack Dee is opting for a very different approach. Culture wars, the climate crisis, British foreign policy, and social justice are all topics Dee will not be addressing in his new show, Small World, at the Black Box Theatre on Thursday, October 23rd 7pm.
Small World is Dee reminding us that even in a world of chaos, it is the little things that can bring joy, or remind us of the absurdities of life, allowing us the space to not take it all too seriously.
Galway audiences will be treated to an exploration of Dee's fascination with things like Zoom protocol, new radiators, and the world’s worst careers advice office. As Dee told The Sun, “The kind of comedy I like is when you focus on minutiae and become more and more sort of silly with it."
Galway Comedy Festival wouldn’t be the same, or feel complete, without Rich Hall, Montana’s curmudgeonly singing cowboy.
Through a career spanning more than a quarter of a century, Hall has won critical acclaim, enjoys sell-out audiences each year at the Edinburgh Fringe and at comedy festivals worldwide, inspired The Simpsons character, Moe Szyslak, and authored the highly praised memoir, Nailing It.
Hall returns with a song and a story delivered in his grouchy, deadpan style, where a big heart always lurks beneath the cynicism, at his solo show in Róisín Dubh on Tuesday, October 21 at 7.30pm, and as part of a mixed bill show at the Black Box Theatre on Wednesday, October 22 at 7pm, and later that same night at 10.30pm at Late Night KARLnival in Pálás Cinema.
For more information, visit www.galwaycomedyfestival.ie
