President Catherine Connolly will make a keynote address on the importance of the arts as a medium to speak truth to power at the opening of the 2026 Galway International Arts Festival next week.
The 49th edition of one of the Europe’s largest multi-disciplinary arts festivals will be officially launched by President Connolly at the Galmont Hotel on Monday, followed by the two-week festival’s opening performance of Carnation, a circus spectacular at the NoFit State Big Top at Nimmo’s Pier.
When she served as a TD for Galway West, President Connolly championed the arts as a public good and driver of social cohesion requiring robust state investment to avoid over commercialisation, so her speech will be keenly observed for hints of criticism at the lack of permanent arts infrastructure in her home town.
Arts festival organisers are also expected to allude to concerns about what will replace the Black Box theatre when it is demolished for a planned housing development on the Dyke Road, and whether part of Halla na Cathrach might be repurposed as a permenant arts space when Galway City Council moves from College Road to Crown Square next year.
The whole city is expected to light up for the GIAF, with Eyre Square the central location for many including the thought-provoking new immersive experience, Flight.
Housed within a shipping container transformed into a hyper-realistic Airbus A320 cabin, Flight invites audiences to step aboard a unique journey. Created by the pioneering team behind immersive theatre company Darkfield, the experience explores a fascinating premise: within the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, there are countless worlds in which this plane lands safely — and countless others in which it does not.
From the giant Seated Man by Sean Henry on in Claddagh to exhibitions at the Festival Gallery, the Printworks Gallery, O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway, Interface Inagh and more, extraordinary visual arts will pepper the city. They will include Presence, a major exhibition by sculptor Sean Henry, internationally renowned for his quietly monumental figures that transform the everyday into something uncanny and deeply human.
Assembly is Ireland’s hugely acclaimed Pavilion from the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture, presented at the O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway. Other major exhibitions include Jackie Nickerson’s Stateside, a layered photographic portrait of contemporary America; Lorraine Tuck’s Limbo, exploring histories of loss and remembrance through stark landscapes; and Dolores Lyne’s Rebel Kin: To the Letter, which draws on Civil War correspondence to create an intimate reflection on personal and political memory, all at the Printworks Gallery.
At Interface, Lough Inagh in Connemara, is Aleana Egan’s A Maritime Child, which responds to the site’s past as a former salmon hatchery, while Gertrude Degenhardt’s Ómós at the Kenny Gallery celebrates the late artist’s distinctive graphic work. Elsewhere, exhibitions include James Wellwood at Engage Art Studios and a 40th anniversary show from Artspace Studios. New work by Luke Reidy at the Outset Gallery, Sioban Piercy at Thoor Ballylee, and Tadhg Ó Cuirrín at 126 Artist-Run Gallery.
A standout programme of international and Irish artists is in store for this year’s Heineken Big Top presented by Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF ) and Róisín Dubh as part of GIAF 2026. Don’t miss The Patti Smith Quartet, The Flaming Lips, Bell X1, Sophie Ellis-Bextor with special guest Kate Nash, James and more across several venues.
New productions in theatre abound too – Druid presents a stunning new production of Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughraun, directed by Garry Hynes; from Fishamble Eva O’Connor’s For Dolores, which bursts onto the stage with energy, risk and a darkly comic heart, in a GIAF co-production; Testament, a major new chamber opera from Irish National Opera with music by Tarik O’Regan and a libretto by Colm Tóibín based on his acclaimed novella The Testament of Mary; while Brú Theatre’s Pádraicín sees Galway become a moving stage in an immersive promenade performance inspired by Pádraic Ó Conaire.
The First Thought Talks series, presented with the University of Galway, brings leading voices together to explore creativity and the defining issues of our time.
Guests will include journalists and broadcasters Bel Trew, Fintan O’Toole, Dearbhail McDonald, Lara Marlowe, Marion McKeone, Adrian Weckler, Sally Hayden and Catriona Crowe, the First Thought curator; artists, writers and directors Garry Hynes, Sean Henry, Martina Evans, Theo Dorgan, Andrew O’Hagan and Paula Meehan, academics Sadhbh O’Neill, Roger Derham and Catriona Clear, author and critic Ben Brantley, amongst a host of others.
Topics will include recent wars in the Ukraine, Gaza and the Middle East; Irish neutrality; Trump’s presidency and America in 2026; where we are with AI; Ireland in the 1920s and 1970s; creative theatrical partnerships; a love of song; climate change and retrofitting our homes.
In addition, the festival’s live festival podcast Vinyl Hours where each guest curates and explores eight of their most treasured songs will feature Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and Katie Bell from Just Mustard.
Galway International Arts Festival’s free Street Art Programme brings the city alive each year and this summer sees the incredible Compagnie PPP roam the city’s medieval streets with a fantastic spectacle based on Moby Dick featuring a giant whale and ship in The Whale Street; while Guru Dudu bring their ever-popular Silent Disco Walking Tours to town.
