This Free Festival Celebrates Irish Storytelling
This Free Festival Celebrates Irish Storytelling
Text: Izzy Copestake
The inaugural Roundstone Storytelling Festival will take place on 18–20 September 2026 in Roundstone, County Galway. Get your free ticket here.
If you love Irish storytelling, you’re going to want to take out your diary now. The Roundstone Storytelling Festival is the creation of Bog Bodies Press, an award-winning independent Irish publishing house that views storytelling as the backbone of culture. Bog Bodies Press has worked with 340+ contributors from 28+ countries across 10+ languages, and is stocked in 55+ independent bookshops worldwide.
The 3 day festival will not be a standard stage and performance setup. Instead, Bog Bodies Press is fostering a genuine coming together around the potential of stories to forge connection, belonging, and understanding. This uniquely Irish approach to storytelling is founded on the belief that stories are a starting point, not a consumable end product. “That feeling of arriving after a long journey, and someone hands you a drink and pulls up a chair is one that’s really important for us,” says Réiltín Ní Aodhagáin, co-director of Bog Bodies Press. “So many of the stories that have stuck with us throughout our lives were told in these contexts, and that’s really what we’re building with Roundstone; a place where everyone is
welcome to come, for free, and be part of something that’s been happening in this corner of Ireland for centuries. We want people to leave with a new perspective, a new friend, a new inspiration, a new story to tell.”
The festival will involve storytelling circles, live performance, traditional music sessions, open-mics and intimate conversations with writers and artists.
“We want people to leave with a new perspective, a new friend, a new inspiration, a new story to tell.”
The choice of location in Roundstone was no coincidence. Connemara has one of the richest living traditions of storytelling in Europe. The Roundstone Storytelling Festival understands that stories are inseparable from the landscape from which they come, and they want to take this inheritance seriously.
The festival is completely free to attend. Reserve your tickets here.
