There is no greater harbinger of a Galway summer than the release of the Arts Festival’s programme, setting out what delights the city may salivate for until mid July.
The 2025 Galway International Arts Festival, from July 14 to July 27, will include a new venue: NoFit State’s Big Top tent at Claddagh Quay. From July 11, this will host Sabotage, an audacious circus spectacle of aerial stunts described by the New York Times as exuding “vagabond glamour”.
There will be eight world premieres across the two weeks, in the arenas of opera, theatre and dance.
Galway’s own Druid will be marking its half century during the festival, with a double-bill of Synge and Shakespeare, and a photography exhibition by Galway’s visual chronicler, Joe O’Shaughnessy, who has been snapping Druid’s players and plays since 1975.
Scottish sculptor David Mach returns to Galway, with a specially commissioned installation Burning Down the House for An Post on William Street. His crucifixion made of coat hangers, mountains of newspapers at the Market Street printworks, and an exploding Range Rover have been festival favourites in the past from the Turner Prize-nominated artist.
A new opera to be staged in Leisureland: Mars from Jennifer Walshe, and Irish National Opera, tackles corporate authoritarianism through the lens of space colonisation, while Luke Murphy’s Scorched Earth uses theatre of dance to tell a dark tale of crime and the Irish psyche.
Big brains, beats and bigger bugs
City streets will be stalked by giant insects in Microcosmos, while thinkers will stalk contemporary issues in the First Thought Talks series including Congresswoman Parmila Jayapal, Fintan O’Toole, Eman Mohammed, and others, who will discuss topics as diverse as the Partition of Ireland, toxic masculinity, Irish rainforests, sea swimming, Ukraine, the GAA, Donald Trump, the IRA, vinyl records, Gaza, kindness, and 50 years of Cope in Galway.
On a lighter note, the Laughter Loft is celebrating 21 years at GIAF, and festival favourite Silent Disco Walking Tours returns. Fans of the visual arts may enjoy a range of exhibitions across several venues, while music fans have everything from Irish trad to Zimbabwean buskers.
The Heineken Big Top is back at Fisheries Field with a line-up featuring Mogwai, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Natasha Bedingfield, Mari Samuelsen with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Galway favourites The Stunning, and a special night celebrating Mary Coughlan’s 40th anniversary with special guests.
GIAF’s live music programme features Bernard Butler, Josephine Foster, Villages, Soda Blonde, The Blades, Glasshouse, HousePlants and Gonora Sounds at the Róisín Dubh, and Biig Piig, BIIRD, Novalima, Richard Thompson, The Magic Numbers. Traditional Music Showcases, and Maverick Sabre play at Monroe’s, in addition to many others.
Always keen to use a variety of venues, GAIF is co-producing Mikel Murfi’s new solo show Oh …, in the main tank of Galway Atlantaquaria. The Baby’s Room is GAIF’s 12th immersive theatre installation, part of an ongoing extraordinary series Rooms created by Enda Walsh and Paul Fahy.
Why the Moon Travels from Moonfish Theatre, devised with an all-Traveller ensemble, is based on Oein DeBhairduin’s best-selling book of the same name.
Blue Water and Cold and Fresh and Sea Wall is a double-bill of plays by Simon Stephens from Decadent Theatre and Galway Arts Centre; Branar and Galway Music Residency’s Story of a Day is a music-filled story of one child’s day that turns the ordinary into extraordinary, with live music from the ConTempo Quartet; while the Irish language seeps into the searing beauty of the Beckettian imagery in An Taibhdhearc and Company SJ’s Beckett sa Chreig Guth na mBan – Footfalls, Rockaby and Not I.
Roll up.
Festival programmes, containing many more listings, are available now, with online bookings open at 10am from tomorrow, Friday, May 9, at 10am. See www.giaf.ie
