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arts · Thursday 16 July 2026 · 11am to 5pm daily 
Main Exhibition 2026: Visual Thread
At King House · King House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon
At King House · King House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon
The Main Exhibition is the centrepiece of Boyle Arts Festival and one of the most substantial curated shows of contemporary Irish art you will find outside a major city gallery. Running under the title “Visual Thread” for 2026, it gathers 160 professional artists from the length of Ireland - West Cork to the Antrim Coast - and fills King House with painting, sculpture, drawing and photography for more than two weeks. It is free to walk in, unhurried, and the quality bar is high: this is an invitation-only programme, so every work on the walls passed curatorial scrutiny. If you have any interest in Irish visual art, this is a genuine reason to make the trip to Roscommon.
Curator Paul McKenna has shaped the exhibition around the idea of a “visual thread” running through Irish art - the continuity and diversity you see when 160 artists, established and emerging, are shown in one space. Painting carries the most weight, but sculpture, drawing and photography all feature strongly. Named artists include John Behan, Rowan Gillespie, Hughie O’Donoghue and Barbara Rae, alongside 2026 graduate award winners Martha Still and Claire Clarke. Two awards will be presented during the festival: the annual Fergus Ahern Award, honouring the festival’s founder, appears for the seventh time, and a newly established Barry Feely Sculptor Award supports emerging and mid-career sculptors in memory of the late artist. The opening ceremony takes place on Thursday 17 July at 8pm - worth attending if you are already in Boyle for the evening.
The exhibition celebrates 37 years of the Boyle Arts Festival’s commitment to bringing serious visual art to the west of Ireland. That continuity is part of the draw: this is not a pop-up, it is an institution.
Boyle sits on the N4/M4 corridor between Dublin and Sligo, roughly two hours by road from Dublin and under an hour from Sligo. Irish Rail runs a direct service from Dublin Connolly to Boyle station, taking around two and a half hours, with departures roughly every four hours. Bus Éireann also serves the town directly from Dublin Busáras, though the journey is longer at around three hours. King House is in the town centre, a short walk from both the bus stop and the train station. Parking is available in the town.
King House itself is worth a look beyond the festival walls - a restored early Georgian mansion built in 1730, it was saved from demolition in the late 1980s and now serves as Boyle’s main cultural venue. The town has Boyle Abbey, one of the best-preserved Cistercian ruins in Ireland, nearby Lough Key Forest and Activity Park, and a pleasant main street. There is more to see in Boyle and across Co. Roscommon.
Heading to King House in Boyle? Roscommon has plenty more to see. Read the Boyle area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.