Kilkenny Arts Festival

22/05/2026

As we prepare for our 53rd edition, we’re delighted to share the title for this year’s Hubert Butler Essay Prize.

Kilkenny Arts Festival has long paid tribute to the memory of Kilkenny native Hubert Butler - one of Ireland’s most respected essayists - with the annual Hubert Butler Lecture and Essay Prize holding keystone places in the Festival Programme.

This year’s essay title is:
“Poetry makes nothing happen” (W.H. Auden). What impact can high culture make in the real world?

Taken from Auden’s elegy for Yeats, written in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War - the question feels as urgent as ever. What impact, if any, can high culture have in a world threatened by disaster?

For full entry details, see link in bio or kilkennyarts.ie/news

21/05/2026

We are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Orla Kelly.

A talented designer, actor, presenter, and politician, Orla served on the Board of Kilkenny Arts Festival for many years and was supportive in more ways that we can count.
She was vivacious, fun, and bold in all the good ways. Time spent in Orla’s company was always enriching.

We will miss her and send our deepest condolences to Blaise, Freagh and Morgan and all who loved her.

20/05/2026

⭐️⭐️ Early Announcement ⭐️⭐️

Kilkenny Arts Festival is thrilled to announce our Classical @ The Cathedral programme - with Ireland’s premier ensembles taking centre stage alongside the Irish premiere of Concert Theatre Works’ newest project with The Gesualdo Six.

Following four sell-outs at KAF25 with Secret Byrd, Concert Theatre Works returns with the Irish premiere of Death of Gesualdo.

Crash Ensemble perform their co-founder Donnacha Dennehy’s Grammy Award-winning Land of Winter - an ode to his home country - set against the late summer sun.

Henning Kraggerud and the Irish Chamber Orchestra dive into the supernatural imagination of Europe.

Chamber Choir Ireland perform Forgotten Peoples, a moving programme focused on the dispossessed and displaced.

And James McVinnie makes a very welcome return for an unmissable programme of JS Bach on organ and piano.

Big concerts with big ideas come to the Cathedral - we can’t wait to welcome you!

🎟️ Tickets from link in bio & kilkennyarts.ie
📍 St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny

18/05/2026

If you missed the Irish Premiere at KAF24, don’t miss our friends and collaborators & performing Jóhann Jóhannsson’s epic and mesmerising Drone Mass for this year’s Festival of Voice this week 🗣️💫

🎥

05/05/2026

VOLUNTEER WITH US 🧡
We're looking for some friendly folk to join our festival family and be at the heart of . Each year, a lovely bunch of humans join us in Kilkenny to make the magic happen! If you love the arts and want to take part in a fun and close-knit working environment then we have the opportunity for you!
Applications are now open. Forms and more info at https://www.kilkennyarts.ie/support/volunteer

28/04/2026

The sun is out in Kilkenny - the city is heating up for kicking off in a few days, always a brilliant weekend ☀️

27/04/2026

⭐️⭐️ Announcement ⭐️⭐️
Kilkenny Arts Festival is thrilled to welcome Cate Le Bon to St Canice’s Cathedral for her only Irish date this summer.
 
Over six albums, including the Mercury Prize-nominated Reward and the critically acclaimed Pompeii, she has honed a singular voice: part surrealist, part sculptor, always attuned to the emotional undercurrents that shape her art. Her production credits, spanning Wilco’s Cousin, Horsegirl’s Phonetics On and On, and St. Vincent’s Grammy-winning All Born Screaming, reflect a deep trust in her ability to transform sonic environments into intimate, idiosyncratic worlds.
 
This August, she brings her stunning new album Michelangelo Dying - a shimmering song cycle of love, loss, and the unknowable self - performed beneath the vaulted stone of St Canice’s. An unmissable night.
 
🎟️ 👉 link in bio 
🗓️ Tuesday 11 August, 2026 
📍 St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny

10/03/2026

⭐️⭐️ 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 ⭐️⭐️

Kilkenny Arts Festival is delighted to announce the world premiere of Michael Gallen’s new opera The Curing Line. Winner of the prestigious Fedora International Opera Prize (the world’s largest prize for new opera), The Curing Line explores themes of healing, loss of culture and environmental collapse through the story of Cora, a young woman who inherits a life-saving ancestral healing power but loses her ability to use it.

🎟️ 👉 https://bit.ly/CuringLineKAF26
🗓️ 5-6 & 8-9 August, 2026
📍Watergate Theatre

Cora’s world is that of an Irish border town in the 1990’s in the midst of ‘The Troubles’. Having grown up in institutional care, Cora is fostered by a family and inherits a cure for ailments of the breath from her foster father. She works for a disreputable mechanic, curing in the evenings and plunging into wild, intoxicated, and increasingly reckless weekend escapades with her foster sister Eileen. In a life that has been shadowed by chaos, loss and misanthropy, the cure becomes the line that connects Cora to self, ancestry and society. Following their father’s death, a tension grows between the sisters around birthright and inheritance, and a moment of crisis begins to unravel Cora’s belief in her capacity to cure. As the pillars of her internal world crumble, so too do those of the world around her, with violent and devastating consequences.

Composed by Michael Gallen, with libretto by Michael Gallen and Annemarie Ní Chuireann, The Curing Line features an extraordinary line-up of contributing creatives; directed by Michael Gallen and Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern, the piece features musicians from opera, traditional and pop backgrounds including Amy Ní Fhearraigh, Sarah Shine, Romain Bly, Josephine Besançon, Caimin Gilmore, Maria Ryan, and Oisin Walsh-Peelo.

Commissioned by the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, The Curing Line was the Winner of the FEDORA Opera Prize 2025 with the support of The Silver Company and is produced by Gallen’s own Straymaker company in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival, Miroirs Étendus and Once Off Productions and is funded by the Arts Council and Creative Monaghan.

09/12/2025

Come and work with Ireland's oldest multi-disciplinary Arts festival!

We’re looking for a Festival Administrator—someone motivated, organised and full of enthusiasm—to play a key role across all our activities. If you enjoy working with great people in a creative environment, and are interested in being a part of a team dedicated to supporting world-class artistic work, we’d love to hear from you.

More info & how to apply 👉 https://www.kilkennyarts.ie/about/vacancies

Closing date: Monday 15 December at 5pm.

Image by Dylan Vaughan
Dumbworld - Where We Bury The Bones @ The Watergate Theatre
Kilkenny Arts Festival

24/11/2025

We’re saddened to learn of the death of Ian Coulter.
His contribution to Kilkenny and his community was extensive and generous, serving the Good Shepherd Centre, the Citizens Information Board, The Butler Gallery, Ossary Youth, the Rotary Club and St. Canice’s Credit Union.

His contribution to Kilkenny Arts Festival was enormous - he joined the organising committee in 1985 and served in numerous roles until 1997, including Secretary and Director. An ordained priest and Canon in the Church of Ireland, Ian continued his contribution to Kilkenny Arts Festival as a volunteer - driving visiting artists to Kilkenny for the last decade. His love of music and the arts was infectious - his passion that Kilkenny deserved to hear and see the finest performers and artists from around the world was remarkable and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of past festivals.

Ian was always kind when his advice was sought, sometimes just reminding us of past crises weathered to keep things in perspective, with a rich well of stories from his adventures at the festival. His advice was insightful and wise, and he offered it generously and gently.

We will miss him enormously and offer our condolences to the community at St. Canice’s Cathedral; and especially his beloved family, his wife Daphne, and their children Rian and Ailbhe.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilís.

From the Dean:

There is deep sadness across the Cathedral community on the death of the Canon Treasurer, The Rev’d. Ian Coulter.

Ian and his wife Daphne and their children Rian and Ailbhe have been part of the cathedral parish for decades. Ian and Daphne were married here forty years ago. They are known and loved here and will be surrounded by the prayers of the community.

As a clerical colleague Ian was a great support to successive deans. He was a devoted Chapter member who had deep affection for the cathedral and a grá for its music and its place in the life of the city. As a friend he was a listening ear, full of great stories and deeply insightful. You could have total trust in his wisdom and his discretion.

In the past four years I have had the privilege of installing Ian into two different chapter stalls, first as Prebendary of Blackrath and this year as the Canon Treasurer. It is telling that these appointments were made under two different bishops - Ian’s contribution to the cathedral, his parish and the diocese being duly recognised by each.

There are few corners of the life of this city that Ian has not touched and to which he has not contributed with characteristic ability and generosity. The Arts Festival, the Good Shepherd Centre, the Butler Gallery, the Credit Union to name a few. Ian was dedicated to our community life in ways that showed his deep love for people and his strong sense of social justice. He will be deeply missed across Kilkenny, and there will be many stories to share.

The Chapter send their deepest condolences to Ian’s family and we commend a brother, colleague and friend unto the love and mercy of God.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal