Colin Sheridan: From culture to politics, the 10 Irish names to watch in 2026

Daryl McCormack attends Netflix's 'Wake Up Dead Man' in New York last month. Picture: Jason Mendez/Getty Images

The business of prediction rarely ages well. Irish public life has a habit of rewarding the unexpected and humbling the apparently inevitable. And yet, every so often, patterns begin to form — not certainties, but currents. 

As Ireland approaches 2026, there is a sense of accumulation rather than rupture. The economy remains outward facing, the cultural confidence hard-won rather than brash, and politics caught between generational impatience and institutional inertia.