Category Archives: Music

Ballyshannon Event-Calendar 2026: Festival-Town once more!

Featured

Posted on by

Rory-Mural. Copyright: pat

Ballyshannon is in for a busy year in 2026. Not all dates are verified yet, but this is roughly what the events-calendar 2026 is going to look like: packed!

30.1.-1.2.2026: Traditional Music Weekend
Kind of the “little sister” of the Folk Festival in summer, and naturally more indoor-based: Venues are usually Dorrians Hotel and the pubs known for their Trad-affiliation – McIntyres and the Bridgend Bar are going to be the hotspots for sure.

14.3.-22.3.: Ballyshannon Drama Festival (not confirmed yet)
For one week The Abbey Arts Centre becomes the focus of everything theatre and literature in Donegal.

8.5.-10.5.: Donegal Fleadh
The County Fleadh is going to be hosted for two consecutive years in Ballyshannon!

28.5.-31.5.: Rory Gallagher International Blues Festival
Ballyshannons most famous son is going to commemorated once again – with aprx. 30 acts on 15 stages, headlined by Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ-Top-fame and Bundorans own Johnny Gallagher.

30.7.-2.8.: Ballyshannon Folk and Traditional Music Festival
It is the year before the big year: The Trad-Festival takes place for its 49th time – the last surviving festival of the great Folk-Boom of the 1970ies. In the middle of the 80ies it was the biggest of its kind, drawing tenthousands of people to Ballyshannon. Will the Trad-revival of recent years give it a fresh boost?

23.10.-25.10.: Ballyshannon Blues Weekend
The “little sister” of the Rory-festival. In the last two years it has become a booming, lively autumn-event, with more than 20 acts on 12 stages. Besides established and even international acts local young bands get their chance to fame: great fun!

3.11.-8.11.: Allingham Arts Festival (not confirmed yet)
A cultural festival in a not even 3000-inhabitant-town? Oh yes, and a very notable one indeed: Allingham features theatre, Poetry, lectures, its very own literature-contest and – for sure – some fine music as well. A real highlight!

Quite honestly: that is more than many towns ten times the size can muster. Looking forward to it!

Short vacation in June? There’s still room

Posted on by


Due to cancellations we do have room in our holyday-home in County Donegal again in June. Our Navone Mews is a rustic, secluded town-house in Ballyshannon, pretty spacious (3 bedrooms, sleeps up to six people), close to all amenities and a great base for tours around Donegal, Fermanagh and northern Sligo.

Here are the dates available:

2.-12.6.2025
16.-19.62025
24.28.6.2025

The minimum stay is three overnights. All details and booking-possibilities here:

Auf Airbnb ansehenPrivatunterkunft · County Donegal · ★4,87 · 3 Schlafzimmer · 4 Betten · 2 Badezimmer

The Ballyshannon Folk Festival

Posted on by

So, the The Ballyshannon Folk Festival 2024 ran its course – in spite of atrocious weather. It made it a tent-event, with too little music on the streets: bad luck, but the people who found their way to the Marquee still had lots of fun.

The Ballyshannon-Festival is the oldest festival of it’s kind meanwhile. All the other ones have gone, Ballyshannon keeps up the Trad-spirit. Check out their website, they are already looking for gigs for 2025.

Singer: Paddy Casey
Video: Joyce T.

The Ballyshannon Folk & Traditional Festival

Posted on by

The Ballyshannon Folk Festival (1. – 4. August 2024) is one of the biggest in the country, and this year it will take place for the 47th time!The town will be buzzing with music.

It started in 1977, when Ballyshannon hosted the Fleadh Cheoil. The experience led to the decision to host a non-commercial Trad-festival every year – probably the reason, why it survived, while many of the great festivals at the West Coast gave up after the Folk-Boom of the 70ies and 80ies came to an end.

Ballyshannon lived on and survived the Covid-years as well. The line-up 2024 is impressive, but that is not the whole story: apart from the “official” concerts you will find plenty of music in the pubs and on the streets of Ballyshannon.

Every year the official poster is a must-have souvenir. Since 1980 they are designed by Barry Britton from Rossnowlagh, and this year’s is a cracker once again (if you are not locked into Facebook you need to allow showing of Facebook-content and reload this page to see the picture):

Barry’s family played a pivotal role in introducing Surfing to the northwest of Ireland. His mother bought a couple of surf-boards for the guests of their beach-hotel in Rossnowlagh in the middle of the 1960ies – and kicked off a real transformation of the place to become one of the best-known watersport-centers in the country. The family instigated the first lntercounties Surfing Contest in 1968, and it was Barry’s older Brother Conor who produced the posters for that – until Barry took over in 1971.

So Barry still hand-draws Posters for Sport- and Music-Festivals, one of the last artists of that craft in Europe – in a tradition that produced artists like Alfons Mucha or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. But Barrys designs are naturally not art deco or frivolous french, but very celtic indeed: Do check out his website!