Theatre, music, dance, spectacle: 10 highlights of Cork Midsummer Festival 2026
The Solstice Ceili takes place at Elizabeth Fort as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. Picture: Jed Niezgoda
A free event that brings the creativity and fun of the festival to the streets. Cork Community Art Link are the group behind the Halloween and other parades in the city, and have teamed up with a bunch of other local organisations to create impressive floats and costumes. One to bring the kids along to.
We’re not quite sure what to expect from the Everyman’s production of British playwright Mark Ravenhill’s work, but both the setting and the people involved make for an intriguing mix. It’s being staged in the empty swimming pool that was previously used as part of the Metropole’s health centre. The piece also features a bona-fide star in Co Louth actress Evanna Lynch, aka Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter films. Directed by the Everyman’s own Des Kennedy, another interesting figure in the backroom team is ace choreographer Luke Murphy.
Author Doireann Ní Ghríofa and composer Linda Buckley team up for a live reading at the former lunatic asylum that’s since been converted into apartments. It’s the perfect setting for a rendition of the Clare writer’s latest book, Said the Dead, which gives voice to the ghosts of the women once incarcerated in a similar institution. The new novel is Ní Ghríofa’s first book since her hugely successful A Ghost in the Throat.
Deirdre Kinahan has been a regular at the Cork festival with such plays as The Saviour, and Tempesta, and returns this year with a tale that touches on refugee themes, told through the eyes of a man who has just arrived at an Irish ferry terminal. Another festival regular Louise Lowe directs.
The rave reports from the premiere run of this show in Dublin in 2024 would suggest that this production from the ThisIsPopBaby stable is going to be one of the highlights of the Cork festival. Created by Cork-born Emer Dineen, it combines cabaret flourishes with insights into an interesting period in her life, and is all told through her club-kid drag persona, Cupid. "As much as it's a very sincere and truthful story, it's also camp and high-octane. It’s kind of a mixture of a rave, musical and concert,” Dineen told us recently.
Pat McCabe was behind the popular Howl On show at last year’s Midsummer Festival, and again joins forces with Michael Lightborne and David Murphy for what is described as another “hallucinatory literary soundscape”. Last time out, Murphy played pedal steel guitar, while Lightborne provided the electronic sounds, and the Clones author went off on flights of the imagination. A strange brew, but it definitely worked.
This year’s offering is set in the fictional Irish city of Midford, where Ellen Daly, is mourning the death of her son. We’re predicting it’ll be dark, surreal and funny.
French speakers should note that the festival’s literary strand also features famed actress Isabelle Huppert reading from the work of Guy de Maupassant.
It’s probably fair to describe choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan as a creator of shows that even people who aren’t into dance will love. He first brought his Teac Damsa company to Cork in 2019 for Loch na hHeala, arguably the best theatrical experience in Ireland this century. He returned for the autobiographical and hilarious How To Be A Dancer In Seventy-Two Thousand Easy Lessons, in 2019 at the Everyman.
This time around, he presents a show that is soundtracked by the music of the Bothy Band’s debut album. First performed last year at Teac Damsa’s base in Chorca Dhuibhne, Co Kerry, it features dancers of various nationalities – including Teac Damsa stalwart Rachel Poirier – putting a personal take on the rhythms of a classic trad album.
Australian troupes seem to have cornered the market in these international circus spectacles. Gravity & Other Myths have a live drummer banging out a beat as eight acrobats twirl and spin through a 60-minute show. There’s also plenty of humour – and even some audience participation – along the way as they ramp up the difficulty level through the hour. One of the hits at Edinburgh last year, the Guardian reviewer called Ten Thousand Hours the “ideal festival show”.
The Christchurch venue has very much become Cork’s home of jazz in recent years, and this concert features a pianist who also brings her classical training to the genre. Born in Mongolia, the 27-year-old has spent a lot of time in Germany, and is a graduate of Munich’s Musikhochschule. Her quartet features an impressive trio of young German musicians.
Martin O Donoghue has the wonderful title of céilíographer for an event that’ll suit anyone who’s fancies a bit of a dance. He has been working with the festival’s own troupe of céilí dancers, but is encouraging people of all ages and abilities to shake a leg for an event that also doubles as the closer for the festival. An ensemble of live musicians will provide the tunes for what organisers describe as a mix of “palaeolithic polkas, wacky waltzes and raving to reels, along with some novel céilí dances”. A fine way to close out the longest day of the year.
- For details and tickets, see www.corkmidsummer.com
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