Belfast Music

Belfast Music UNESCO City of Music. Belfast’s music scene, from punk to proms, trad to rock legends and fantastic emerging new talent

Book for 2 Royal Avenue gigs here - http://belfast_music.eventbrite.com

We wouldn’t scroll past this one 🎶 ✨Applications are now open for The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival Music Bursaries, h...
31/08/2026

We wouldn’t scroll past this one 🎶 ✨

Applications are now open for The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival Music Bursaries, hosted through partnership with Belfast City Council and the Music Matters strategy to support the composition and recording of new music by Northern Ireland-based artists.

Twenty bursaries of £1,000 each are up for grabs. That’s backing to turn an idea into something you can release into the world.

Whether you’re an emerging artist chasing a first proper recording or an established name ready to make your next move, this is time, space and money to create. And it’s open to solo musicians and bands alike.

Past recipients span the full breadth of what’s being made here - from Eve Belle, Conchur White and Gemma Bradley to Wynona Bleach, Conor Mallon, Róise, Rebecca Rua and Fun Protestants - a reminder of just how much range there is in Northern Irish music right now.

The funding can go toward the whole journey: studio hire, engineering, mixing and mastering, session musicians, right through to the campaign around it, from video and photography to artwork, manufacture and distribution, PR and marketing.

So what could £1,000 unlock for you? A new track. An EP. A recording session. A collaboration you’ve been meaning to chase. That project you’ve been sitting on.

Full info via the link in bio. It couldn’t be easier!

Deadline: 5pm on Friday, 29th October 2026.

https://cqaf.com/creative-bursaries-2026/

Clear your diary for Thursday, 24th September: Output Belfast is back and it’s going big.Presented by Belfast City Counc...
21/08/2026

Clear your diary for Thursday, 24th September: Output Belfast is back and it’s going big.

Presented by Belfast City Council / Belfast City of Music, and programmed by Score Draw Music, Ireland’s largest one-day music conference takes over The MAC, Oh Yeah Music Centre and the Cathedral Quarter with 28 sessions built for anyone making, managing, scoring, booking or breaking music right now. Want to know how producers actually get paid in 2026? How to fund a tour without losing your mind? How to write a Eurovision banger? Dana’s on that panel, so you’re in safe hands.

The opening keynote is a serious statement: Tom Kiehl, Chief Executive of UK Music, sits down with Catherine Martin of the Ivors Academy (the former Minister for Culture behind the Basic Income for the Arts pilot) and David Martin of the Featured Artists Coalition. Three people shaping how the industry works on both sides of the border, in one room, in Belfast.

New for 2026: a gear expo room with Audient consoles and interfaces, Lowden guitars and a full Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 listening experience.

And the best part? It is, once again, completely free.

Full conference details and registration is open now via link below, with a closing keynote announcement still to drop in early September. As ever, the full lineup for the evening showcases, a fixture of the NI music calendar, will be announced soon. Watch this space ✨

https://www.outputbelfast.com/

One of the best new bands in Belfast could be standing beside you at the bar and you’d never know.mimics arrived earlier...
21/08/2026

One of the best new bands in Belfast could be standing beside you at the bar and you’d never know.

mimics arrived earlier this year with debut EP ‘A Cold & Gentle Place’, entirely self-produced, mixed and mastered, and have been gathering momentum ever since. No names, no faces: just handmade masks inspired by the theatre of ancient Greece, full drama blacks, and one of the most fully realised new propositions in the city right now.

The music more than earns the mystery. Heavy and atmospheric with real hooks cutting through, it’s a sound that keeps wrongfooting you, built around a single question: how much of who we are really belongs to us?

New single ‘Skullcap’ is out today, and it’s the sharpest statement yet: pulverising and earworming in equal measure. The five-track EP ‘The Dreamer is Dead’ follows on 11th September.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZJXSifdPNE

Thought Fleadh Cheoil was over? Not quite. The city-wide fringe programme signs off in style this week with a wrap-up we...
18/08/2026

Thought Fleadh Cheoil was over? Not quite. The city-wide fringe programme signs off in style this week with a wrap-up weekend running from Thursday 20th to Sunday 23th August, and it reaches every corner of Belfast!

There’s Museum Late - Ceol and Craic at the Ulster Museum, an evening of bilingual song and story at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, cabaret blending music, spoken word and storytelling at the Duncairn, and Rónán Ó Snodaigh with Myles O’Reilly at Skainos.

Templemore Baths hosts Harry Bradley, Rev Gary Hastings and Aoife Granville for an afternoon of flute and fife, while families can take their pick from a céilí at the Commons on the Ormeau Road, a fun day with Anaka Women’s Collective on Donegall Street, and Super Session Sunday at the ABC Hub in Ardoyne. It all wraps with the Highlands, Islands and Ireland concert at St Colmcille’s Church on Sunday night: the official closing event of the city-wide fringe.

Several events are free, with tickets for the rest from just £8. Delivered by The Duncairn on behalf of Belfast City Council and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann.

Full details and booking via the Duncairn box office 🎻

https://www.theduncairn.com/latest-news-1/2026/7/25/city-wide-fleadh-fringe-2026

Hundreds of ukulele players are set to descend on Donegall Quay this weekend 🎶Supported through Belfast City Council's B...
13/08/2026

Hundreds of ukulele players are set to descend on Donegall Quay this weekend 🎶

Supported through Belfast City Council's Bank of Ideas, Belfast Ukulele Festival brings The Big Ukulele Jam to the Big Fish this Sunday, August 16th, aiming for the biggest gathering of ukulele players Belfast has ever seen. They’re even hoping to set an all-Ireland record while they’re at it.

The giant singalong kicks off at 2pm and it’s completely free. Whether you’re part of a ukulele group or a lone strummer, players of all ages and abilities are welcome, and curious spectators are too.

All the songs on the day come from this year’s festival songbook, so download your copy below and bring it along on your device with your uke and your singing voice.

https://www.belfastukefest.co.uk/the-big-jam

The Fleadh may be over, but look at what it left behind.More than 1.6 million visits were recorded across Belfast city c...
10/08/2026

The Fleadh may be over, but look at what it left behind.

More than 1.6 million visits were recorded across Belfast city centre during Fleadh week, according to Belfast One BID's footfall cameras, with Saturday 8th August alone bringing 289,560 people into town, the busiest day of the year so far. The first All-Ireland Fleadh ever held in this city, and Belfast turned out for it in numbers nobody will forget.

Behind that figure is a week of moments: sessions spilling out of pubs and into alleyways, the Gig Rig at City Hall, every tradition on this island sharing the same stages, and a city centre that felt alive from morning until well past midnight. Visitors came from all over the world and found a Belfast at its very best.

To everyone who played, danced, sang, volunteered or simply showed up: this was yours. And the best bit? The Fleadh returns to Belfast in 2027. We're 👏 only 👏 getting 👏 started.

09/08/2026

It’s the final day of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann Belfast 2026. And what a week it’s been.

Some of the very best Fleadh moments have happened between two rows of houses. Yesterday, neighbours in the Haypark and Rushfield alleyway pulled out the chairs, tuned up and let a session take hold. Seisiúin Ceoil Traidisiúnta, right where people live, with the tunes drifting over back walls and everyone welcome to pull up a seat.

This is the beating heart of this festival. Sessions have been springing up all week in pubs and alleyways, in community spaces and on street corners right across the city. No tickets needed or barriers up: just people and music finding each other. It’s what the Fleadh has always been about, and this week Belfast has shown it knows exactly how it’s done!

07/08/2026

Last night the Titanic Slipways hosted something quietly historic. The Ulster Bands Showcase, presented by the Belfast Bands Forum, brought the sounds and craftsmanship of Unionist and Ulster-Scots musical tradition into the heart of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.

Flute bands, pipe bands, Lambeg drumming and Scottish country dancing filled the Slipways, with performances from the Imperial Guards Belfast, Sir Henry Inglesby Fife and Drum, County Armagh Drum Majors and more, alongside Highland dance sets from the Molly Smith School of Highland Dance and Sollus Highland Dancers.

The first Fleadh ever held in Belfast was always going to mean something. Last night showed exactly what: a festival with room for every tradition on this island, and a city confident enough to celebrate all of them on the same stage. Among the crowd were the Lord Mayor, the Taoiseach and the Communities Minister, watching it happen together.

There’s more where that came from. Follow along all week for the rest of Fleadh Belfast 2026.

Some awards just land right. Last night at Belfast City Hall, Dónal O'Connor, Artistic Director of Belfast TradFest, rec...
05/08/2026

Some awards just land right. Last night at Belfast City Hall, Dónal O'Connor, Artistic Director of Belfast TradFest, received the Comhaltas Ceannródaithe award at the Bardic Awards, honouring exceptional contributions to the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music, song, dance and culture.

Few have earned it like Dónal. Belfast TradFest, having just wrapped its breathtakingly brilliant 2026 outing, is no small part of why the Fleadh believed in Belfast in the first place, and why the city was ready when it arrived. To see that recognised in City Hall, with the Fleadh in full voice outside the same building, is about as fitting as it gets. Congratulations too to fellow awardees Niall McClean, Francis McPeake and Maurice Brown, honoured alongside him.

Comhghairdeas, Dónal! This city owes you a tune or ten. 🏆

2 Royal Avenue has two of Fleadh Cheoil'ss most special evenings lined up this week. Tomorrow night, Thurs 6th August fr...
05/08/2026

2 Royal Avenue has two of Fleadh Cheoil'ss most special evenings lined up this week. Tomorrow night, Thurs 6th August from 6pm, Stendhal Festival brings its takeover: sixteen years of championing homegrown talent distilled into one Fleadh showcase, with Alana Henderson, Paddy Nash & Friends and Polar Bolero among those celebrating the creative community at the heart of it all. Bígí linn, as they say! Tickets a tenner.

Then Friday belongs to MOIRO: the Music of Irish Origin stage, presented by Smashing Buttons, where trad meets everything it's influenced over the last eighty years. The daytime brings rising singer-songwriter Cora Harkin and BGT semi-finalist Niamh Noade playing alongside three generations of her own family, before the evening runs from Trad Folkin' Rocks through Charlie Hanlon and VERA to a spellbinding close from Dark Tropics, whose cinematic pop-noir has won support from Radio 1 to RTÉ.

And here's the detail we love: kids go free and they're welcome to stay right to the 11pm finish, so nobody's carried home before the good bit. £5 adults, £4 concessions.

Two nights in one address, and the whole story of Irish music in miniature. Tickets below.

https://fleadhcheoil.ie/event/smashing-buttons-presents-moiro/106910101/

https://fleadhcheoil.ie/event/stendhal-festival-presents/106843101/

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