We present to you a final argument against writing off summer just yet…
There is a peculiar moment every August in Ireland when we collectively decide summer is over before it actually is.
The schools aren’t back. Electric Picnic hasn’t even happened yet. There are still outdoor stages standing around Dublin like ghosts in the night. Yet somebody has spotted a Halloween display in a supermarket and we’re apparently expected to surrender.
Not yet. Don’t cave in! Put the monkey peanuts back on the shelf where they belong and wheel that shopping cart on by.
There is still a particularly good final run of live music and culture ahead this year, and, more importantly, women aren’t an afterthought in it. So we’ve deliberately kept this selection gender-balanced while looking beyond the biggest marketing budgets to some of the smaller events doing interesting things too.
Here are a few worth catching before we give in and start talking about autumn and what we are going to dress up as for Halloween.
DUBLIN
1. Amyl and the Sniffers
25 & 26 August | Collins Barracks
Tickets: 62.85 Euro
Amy Taylor is one of the most compelling frontpeople in rock right now.
Amyl and the Sniffers arrive at Collins Barracks for two nights as part of Wider Than Pictures, with their gloriously unvarnished collision of punk, pub rock and controlled chaos.
The first night is already down to limited availability, with a second date added for 26 August. Mannequin Pussy and Spider are also on the bill.
There are bands who make perfectly respectable records and there are bands you really need to see live to understand. Amyl and the Sniffers belong firmly in the latter camp.
They do look like they put on quite the show.
2. Diljit Dosanjh
25 August | 3Arena
One of the most culturally significant bookings in Dublin this summer also happens to be one of the most interesting.
Punjabi superstar Diljit Dosanjh has moved far beyond being described simply as a major Indian artist. He has become a genuinely global touring act, taking Punjabi-language music into spaces historically dominated by English-language Western pop.
That trajectory matters in an Irish city whose population and cultural identity have changed enormously over the past two decades.
A Dublin music calendar that properly reflects the people who actually live in Dublin should look something like this.
Damn, he got the moves.
3. Faye Webster with Sprints and Amie Blu
27 August | Collins Barracks
This is a cracking bill.
Atlanta singer-songwriter Faye Webster headlines another Wider Than Pictures night, but Dublin’s own Sprints and London singer-songwriter Amie Blu make this much more than a one-artist proposition.
Webster’s music moves between indie, folk, country, R&B and the wonderfully difficult-to-categorise territory in between.
For anyone looking for something more intimate musically than the stadium-scale end of summer, despite the rather substantial surroundings of Collins Barracks, this is one of the strongest bills remaining.
4. The Prodigy
20 August | IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham
Some bands mellow with age.
The Prodigy were never particularly convincing candidates.
More than three decades after helping drag rave culture into rock venues and festival fields, they remain one of the most ferocious live electronic acts around.
Kilmainham provides the setting and, if you’ve somehow reached the end of summer without having your internal organs rearranged by a sound system, here’s your opportunity.
Their live shows are still pure energy even without Keith (RIP).
5. LOUD WOMEN Fest Dublin
29 August | Fibber Magees
This one deserves considerably more attention.
LOUD WOMEN Fest arrives in Dublin for the first time after building an international network of festivals devoted to putting women-led and non-binary alternative artists on stages.
The Dublin line-up includes Bill Ricky, DC Dolls, Dose, FOSFÍN, Holy Show, I, Doris, Molly Vulpyne and Second Idol, spanning punk, post-punk, grunge, indie, shoegaze and art-rock.
And it is happening in Fibbers. Frankly, where else would you put it? Indie/alt rock lives there in Dublin.
For an Irish music industry that can still produce remarkably inventive explanations for why women aren’t appearing on line-ups, here’s an entire day demonstrating that finding them isn’t actually very difficult.
6. Rounds of Thought: Did Pubs Almost Kill Irish Literature?
8 September | Dublin 2
Tickets: Early Bird 10 Euro / Full price: 15 Euro
Here’s the curveball.
Rounds of Thought takes the basic architecture of Irish intellectual life, a pub, and the Irish people’s capacity for healthy debate and turns it into a live cultural series built around proper conversation rather than just another boring event panel talk.
Across four Tuesday nights in September, the programme moves through neuroscience, literature, creativity and psychology.
It opens on 1 September with neuroscientist Professor Shane O’Mara exploring how our minds shape one another and what that means for democracy with the attendees on the night. Where will the bar venue be? We don’t know yet, but that’s the charm to it also; you buy the tickets knowing it’s going to be the best tenner you’ve spent all summer.
On 8 September, Professor Chris Morash tackles the brilliantly provocative Did Pubs Almost Kill Irish Literature?, looking beyond Ireland’s romantic mythology of the hard-drinking literary genius.
On 15 September, artist and author Aoife Dooley explores How Neurodiversity Influences My Creativity, before psychologist and memory researcher Professor Ciara Greene closes the series on 22 September with Why Forgetting Might Actually Be Your Superpower.
Four nights, four very different conversations, and tickets are just €10.
At a time when so much public discourse amounts to people shouting at strangers online, there’s something appealingly old-school about putting curious people in a pub together and giving them something worth arguing about.
Sometimes culture doesn’t require an arena, a wristband or a €100 ticket.
Sometimes you need a pint, a room full of curious people and a question good enough to start an argument.
7. Another Love Story
21–23 August | Killyon Manor, Co. Meath
Tickets: Day Tickets from 65.00 to weekend tickets from 225.00 (camping Sat & Sun)
Another Love Story has spent more than a decade resisting the idea that every successful festival must eventually become enormous.
Its 2026 programme brings LTJ Bukem, Bradley Zero, Steffi x Virginia, Mad Professor, Stella and the Dreaming, The Fynches and others into the grounds of Killyon Manor.
There are talks, walks, performances, swimming, woods, meadows and the sort of festival environment where you’re considerably more likely to encounter the same person twice.
In an era of increasingly homogenised large-scale festival experiences, maintaining that sense of intimacy is an achievement in itself.
8. Electric Picnic
28–30 August | Stradbally, Co. Laois
Tickets: SOLD OUT (Obviously.)
Electric Picnic remains the enormous full stop at the end of the Irish festival summer, but this year’s programme gives us considerably more to talk about than the main-stage headliners.
CMAT, Zara Larsson, Wolf Alice, Denise Chaila, Eleanor McEvoy and Florence Road sit across a programme that also includes Fontaines D.C., Gorillaz, Lewis Capaldi, Sombr, The Mary Wallopers, Donal Lunny, Máirtín O’Connor and dozens more.
The interesting thing about Electric Picnic has always been what happens away from the obvious names anyway: spoken word, theatre, comedy, trad, cabaret, conversations and strange little stages you stumble across while attempting to find somewhere else entirely.
And there we have it.
Ten events. Dublin gets seven, the rest of the country gets three. Women and men are represented across the selection rather than women being confined to the customary paragraph about how wonderful it is that things are apparently improving.
There are global stars, Irish artists, punk bands, traditional musicians, theatre, literature, independent promoters and one very large weekend in a field in Laois.
Summer isn’t dead yet. And are you really even living if you didn’t get tickets to this festival? Don’t answer that question; we all know the answer to that.
Hail Queen CMAT. Lots of people would grow their bush out for their tickets. (Watch below video for context.)
The Industry Review 
Leave a comment