Kilkenny Arts Festival announces its main summer programme today
with a plethora of new projects & commissions, exquisite performances, new collaborations, intriguing installations and residencies and much, much more.
7 – 17 August 2025
Speaking of the announcement today (18 June 2025), Festival Director, Olga Barry said: “We’re delighted to announce the 52nd edition of Kilkenny Arts Festival. ‘For over half a century, August in the Marble City has been synonymous with extraordinary artists and performers bringing their work to our beautiful city and fantastic audiences. New ideas in ancient spaces is the hallmark of Kilkenny in the late summer, and this year’s programme is packed with the new; world and Irish premieres, intriguing collaborations and residencies, intimate experiences and epic spectacle occupy Kilkenny both in centre stage and all around the edges. In 2025 the work of these creators doesn’t shy away from some of the big questions facing humanity and society today – we invite everyone to come and join us to experience this special kinship between artists and audiences.’’
Highlights include:
Premiere performance of Custom of the Coast – a dramatic new work framing the stories of two women who changed Ireland – Savita Halappanavar and Anne Bonny – from US/Indian composer Kamala Sankaram and text from poet Paul Muldoon. Directed by Alan Gilsenan and Music Direction by Kate Ellis; featuring Anchal Dhir, Michelle O’Rourke, Crash Ensemble and Danny O’Mahony – presented with Yellow Asylum Film. Fri 8 Aug, St. Canice’s Cathedral.
Premiere of Peter Hanly’s What Are you Afraid Of? with the Festival’s most frequent theatre partners of recent years, Rough Magic. Directed by the award-winning Lynne Parker and featuring Hanlyhimself playing the main role in this extraordinary work of self-interrogation. This production simultaneously takes us into Hanly’s inner thoughts while inviting us all to consider the same primary question of ourselves. Presented in partnership with Rough Magic. 5-12 Aug, Watergate Theatre.
Premiere of a new audio/visual projection spectacle from the genre-defying artist Laura Sheeran for Light Up the Castle 2025 –“ ____ Because You’re Free” for Kilkenny Castle – Sheeran’s work asks what it means to be human today, in a world gripped by technological advancement, in an ecological crisis, and invites us to remember ourselves as feeling, embodied beings. Commissioned by Kilkenny Arts Festival and presented in association with OPW. 13-16 Aug, Kilkenny Castle . FREE.
Premiere of Neon Dusk – new work featuringan acrobatic blend of spectacle, movement and contemporary circus from Jonah McGreevy, Mafalda Conclaves and Daniel Seabra – a spectacle powered by solar energy which offers a surreal and highly original take on human movement, bathed in the fractured light of our electric age. 7-10 Aug & 13-17 Aug, Castle Yard.
Premiere of Where We Bury the Bones from the powerhouse of Dumbworld, John McIlduff and Brian Irvine, with designer Sabine Dargent. Developed out of a work presented at KAF 2021, this new production begins with the discovery of a single bone during an excavation which explores the way in which we choose to tell can reveal more about ourselves than the history itself. 14-16 Aug, Watergate Theatre.
Premiere of We Who Live Under Heaven – a mixed-reality work from Performance Corporation, directed by Jo Mangan with music by the iconic electronic composer Roger Doyle – audiences will encounter an unknown being, in captivity, where connection transcends reality. Sun 17 Aug, Watergate Theatre.
Premiere of Sam Perkin’s The More Beautiful World, commissioned by Kilkenny Arts Festival is performed by The Fews Ensemble led by Joanne Quigley McParland and directed by Tom Creed– based on a text from Charles Eisenstein, this work asks what in a tie of social and ecological crisis, what can we do to make the world a better place.
Premiere of This-Topia from the awe-inspiring band, Meltybrains? – Part immersive theatre, part rave, part ritual – a meltdown in motion directed by Kate O’Halloran and choreography and performance by Jessie Thompson and visuals by Ross Ryder. Sun 17 Aug, Watergate Theatre.
Irish Premiere of Secret Byrdfeaturing the Gesualdo Six and the viol consort Fretwork in an immersive piece of concert theatre with a performance of William Byrd’s glorious Mass for Five Voices, directed by Bill Barclay. 12 & 13 Aug, Black Abbey.
Irish Premiere of 740 Years of Reverb from composer Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) and performed by organists Eliza McCarthy and James McVinnie – titled uniquely for St. Canice’s Cathedral, this work is performed in a continuous 8-hours where audiences will experience an epic journey of sound. Sun 9 Aug, St. Canice’s Cathedral.
These works and performances sit at the heart of Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2025 where both the intimacy and expansiveness of human challenges are explored throughout the work of these extraordinary artists – that defy genre and categorisation but invite audiences to immerse themselves in a range of provocative and considered work.
More Programme Information HERE –
Classical Music at St. Canice’s Cathedral is always a highlight of the Festival – this year featuring three of Ireland’s finest ensembles directed by three of the world’s most exciting and acclaimed interpreters of their chosen repertoire – Paul Hillier makes a welcome return to KAF2025 with festival favourites, Chamber Choir Ireland – Hillier’s unique and personal relationship with the iconic Estonian composer Arvo Pärt will make this special concert celebrating the composer on his 90th birthday year (Tues 12 Aug, St. Canice’s Cathedral). The Irish Baroque Orchestra directed by their Olivier Award-winning director Peter Whelan perform the Dublin version of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast in advance of their BBC Proms debut with the same programme – their playing described by Opera Today as ‘an absolute joy’ is not to be missed! Thurs 14 Aug, St. Canice’s Cathedral.
The Festival’s adored Orchestra in residence, Irish Chamber Orchestra, welcome their newest artistic partner to Kilkenny for the first time as Henning Kraggerud directs a programme of repertoire that shows off the extraordinary string ensemble of the ICO led by Katherine Hunka, featuring the divine Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th Symphony, Barber’s engrossing Adagio for Strings; adores works from JS Bach include Brandenburg Concerto No 3 and Violin Concerto No 1, alongside works by ‘ Lili’ Boulanger and Kraggerud himself. Fri 15 Aug, St. Canice’s Cathedral.
In a lunchtime series at St. John’s Priory, the festival opens with Fahmi Alqhai on Viola da Gamba presenting a pair of concerts featuring adored works from the 1600s from Marin Marais and Sainte-Colombe through interpretations of JS Bach up to Jimi Hendrix and Alqhai himself. Born in Seville to a Syrian father and Palestinian mother, Alqhai is recognised as one of the most brilliant players of the Viola da Gamba as well as the most lauded interpreters of early music. 8 & 9 Aug, St John’s Priory.
Midweek brings musical treats with the gorgeous ensemble Strung who excel in chamber arrangements of Irish tunes; the standout chamber group from the north of Ireland, The Fews Ensemble performing works from Shostakovich, Joan Trimbe and Olivier Messiaen’s iconic Quartet for the End of Time. The young tubist Adam Buttimer completes the midweek portion of the series with a programme from Bach to contemporary composers Aliyah Danielle and Megan Churcher. Mon 11-14 Aug, St, John’s Priory.
Ending the series is a pair of concerts featuring countertenor Mark Chambers with lutenist Toby Carr performing a programme of Dowland and Danyel and alongside new works from Nico Muhly and Joby Talbot (premiere); and the exquisite collective The Earls of Ormond with festival stalwarts Laoise O’Brien (recorders) and Malcolm Proud (chamber organ) along with viols from Sarah Groser and Norah O’ Leary, with guest Mark Chambers, is a programme exploring the life of Margaret Butler – the Cursed Countess. Sat 16 Aug, St. John’s Priory.
Residencies have long been at the core of any Kilkenny Arts Festival – fiddle player extraordinaire Martin Hayes’ Marble City Sessions is a firm Festival favourite and returns with the usual eclectic mix of artists.
This year, the Festival hosts another Kilkenny stalwart, Kate Ellis, alongside Francesco Turrisi curating an extensive programme of artists and performances featuring new work made especially in and for Kilkenny. Including Niwel Tsumbu, Joanna Mattrey, Rahki Singh, Simmy Singh, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Matt Jacobson, Fulvio Sigatura, Derek Whyte, Nick Roth and Colin Dunne; imbedded alongside Ellis and Francesco holding court at the Set Theatre for the first half of the festival is a unique performance (Irish Premiere) by James McVinnie and Eliza McCarthy of Jonny Greenwood’s X Years of Reverb curated by Kate Ellis, and Ruth McGinley and Matthew Nolan’s specially curated exploration of Ryuichi Sakamoto. Martin Hayes always brings a special flavour to Kilkenny, with performances from violinist/fiddler Aoife Ní Bhrian and pianist/composer Cormac McCarthy’s stunning new duo; Danny O Mahony (accordion) also featured in the festival for the first time in the opera premiere of Custom of the Coast earlier in the festival and takes over Cleere’s Theatre for what promised to be a rollicking night of tunes; the exquisite pairing of Maria Ryan and Lucia Mac Partlin bring their duo performance and arrangements to the festival and Martin Hayes will gathers festival artists together for what is always an unforgettable night at St. Canice’s Cathedral on the closing Saturday.
Beyond the residencies there are standout headline performances from risings stars Anna B Savage, RÓIS of whom the Guardian said, ‘an arresting new talent’; DUG bring their American and Irish folk sound to the Set Theatre; and Fedora Prize-winner, Michael Gallen’s collective Sudden Wells will do a special performance in advance of their new album release. The Rollercoaster Sessions returns Kilkenny favourite, the incomparable Seamus Fogarty revisits his very first album release from 2012 along with new material; and Elise – a young Kilkenny star in the making with a soulful voice and fresh blend of indie folk and pop.
Poetry takes centre stage in literature with Paul Muldoon and his ‘History of Ireland in 12 Poems’ where the current Irish Professor of Poetry confronts Ireland’s history through the prism of his own work; Annemarie Ní Churreáin reads from her 2016 work Ghostgirl -addressing hidden histories in Ireland, where this work responding to archival records of a Mother & Baby Home in Donegal; Martina Evans’ reading in 2024 from her narrative poem The Coming Thing was a standout event – this year Evans returns to Kilkenny to read from her sequel to that work, Drunken Driving in advance of its publication in 2026; and Paula Meehan closes the poetry series with reading from her most recent collection The Solace of Artemis.New press, fallowwill also present a gathering from their new bi-annual journal featuring fiction, poetry and essays from a range of writers working today.
The Butler Gallery in association with the Festival presents a remarkable exhibition – Cities of the World curated by Butler Gallery director, Anna O’Sullivan – exploring the theme of Cities of the World by two artists, Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach. These two artists have never met but are intrinsically linked by this subject matter which they realise in very different ways. Prendergast’s City Drawings are based on contemporary maps of the world’s capital cities and follows her own sense of scale to contain each city on the same size paper, while Leach’s work is 196 tiny drawings of every recognised capital city in the world which function as one piece of work. An additional film programme called City as Character co-curated by Out of Focus, will be shown in the Digital Gallery and the Watergate Theatre. In addition the celebrated architect Valerie Mulvin of McCullough Mulvin, whose recent exhibition with the Irish Architecture Foundation The Reason of Towns explored the originality and potential of the Irish town. Here she hosts a number of guest speakers in an event that considers the imagination of cities – Productive Disorder: Cities and Imagination.
Further exhibitions presented by the Kilkenny Arts Office feature artist Kate Fahey curated by Rachel Botha; and KCAT studio present an exhibition The Known and Unknown World curated by Benjamin Stafford.
Barnstorm Theatre presents an international programme for Stormfest – a programme of theatre for young children – including shows The Bear that Wasn’t, Geppetto, The Land of a Hundred Little Hills.
The ever popular free, twice daily pop-up concert series, Secret Garden Music is featured throughout the festival across the fabric of Kilkenny City and environs.
Tickets on sale now from kilkennyarts.ie
Photo credit – Simon Mills