Galway Comedy Festival 2026: Tommy Tiernan, Father Ted Priests and 'Comedy Christmas'
Ireland's self-declared largest comedy festival packed 60 shows into 14 venues over the bank holiday. Nobody wrote a review, and nobody needed an application form.
By the Heckle Desk · · 3 min read
The Galway Comedy Festival ran from Tuesday, October 20 to Monday, October 26, finishing on the October bank holiday, which is the Irish way of making sure everyone gets a day off to recover from laughing, or from whatever they did instead of laughing. The organizers counted 80 artists, 60 shows and 14 venues across seven days and nights. Hot Press reported that the festival goes by the nickname Comedy Christmas, and I believe it, because I have never seen a Christmas in Galway that didn't also involve a long queue outside a pub.
Festival director Kevin Healy calls it Ireland's largest comedy festival, and it has been running for more than 20 years, which in comedy terms makes it older than most of the material. Nobody I could find has disputed the largest part, but then nobody in Ireland argues in late October, when the sun sets at lunchtime.
The top of the bill was the sort of list a promoter reads aloud to himself at night for comfort: Tommy Tiernan, Dara Ó Briain, Deirdre O'Kane, Emma Doran, David McSavage, Serena Terry and Al Porter, plus Jack Dee and Mike Wozniak over from England, Rhys Darby from New Zealand with a show called Unhinged, and Georgie Carroll and Vanessa Larry Mitchell from Australia. Jack Dee coming all that way to be glum in a wetter country strikes me as the kind of commitment we no longer see from our politicians.
Below the marquee, the festival flagged Shawn Uyosa, Sinéad Quinlan and Darren Gaffney as rising stars, and Emer Maguire from Tyrone, a two-time IMRO Award winner whom the BBC once called an indie Victoria Wood. That is a fine compliment, though in my experience any comparison that needs the word indie in front of it is a polite way of saying you will be paid in sandwiches.
The strangest and best corner of the program was at the Pálás Cinema, where Joe Rooney, Patrick McDonnell and Kevin Gildea, the Father Ted veterans, turned up, and where the Irish premiere of Exiled in Ireland screened. It is a comedy about three priests stranded on a lockdown retreat who come to believe God has exiled them. I am not a theologian, but after the last thirty years of Irish church history I would say God has been remarkably patient about it.
The festival tried theatre for the first time, three nights of it, including The Kavanaghs: Married with Parents by Al Porter and Karl Spain. There was Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience, a debut session of Laughter Yoga, and Gáire as Gaeilge, a night of Irish-language stand-up at Pálás on Friday the 23rd, headlined by Belfast's Paddy McDonnell and hosted by Eddie Mullarkey. Thanks to it, half the country can finally tell a joke their teachers would approve of, and the other half can laugh a beat late, nodding, the way we all did in school.
The kindest thing on the schedule was CroíACT, now in its third year: eight Galway locals, coached by Karl Spain, performing their first stand-up sets, with proceeds going to Croí and ACT for Meningitis. Eight civilians walking onstage in front of their neighbors for charity is braver than anything Dave Chappelle will do this month, and he has an arena to hide in.
Now, the bad news. I couldn't find a single published review of the 2026 edition, from the Irish Times, the Galway papers or anybody else, so I can't tell you who killed and who died, and I won't pretend to. A festival this size going unreviewed is like a wedding with no photographer: everybody had a wonderful time, and in five years they will all remember it differently.
For comics, the useful fact is that Galway is not a submit-and-pray festival. The official site lists no performer application, no fee and no open call. It is a curated, booked program, the kind of festival you get invited to after you have already made it, which is how show business and golf clubs both work. Galway Tourism already lists the 2027 edition for October 19 to 25. Heckle's verdict: there is nothing to submit to, so go as a punter, take a raincoat, and bring an agent if you want to come back as an act.
It is the oldest rule in the trade: a festival with no application form isn't closed to you. It just wants to hear about you from somebody else first.