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festivals · Friday 3 July 2026 · Various 
Clonmel Junction Arts Festival
At Clonmel Town Centre · Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
At Clonmel Town Centre · Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
Each July, Clonmel comes alive for ten days with one of the south of Ireland’s most distinctive arts gatherings. The Junction Arts Festival has been running since 2001 and has developed into a proper multi-art-form event - one that takes the whole town as its canvas rather than confining itself to a single venue. The 2026 edition runs under the theme of “Exchanges”, exploring cultural encounters and blended influences, and it draws a crowd that ranges from families after free afternoon entertainment to serious theatre-goers looking for new international work.
The programme mixes paid headline shows with a generous layer of free activity throughout the town centre. On the ticketed side, 2026 brings David Geraghty (one of the founding members of Bell X1) for an evening concert, Muireann Bradley on blues and ragtime guitar, and the Edinburgh Fringe hit The Horse of Jenin by Alaa Shehada. Physical theatre and dance feature strongly, with Barbarian and contemporary dance works Cosmophobia and Tremors on the schedule. FeliSpeaks and Paul Howard with Alan Clarke round out a varied programme.
One of the festival’s most appealing features is the festival cafes: artists take over vacant shops and offices around the town and convert them into workshop spaces. It makes the festival feel genuinely embedded in the streetscape rather than siloed in one building. In 2026 the Mask Project, led by artist Tom Campbell, offers painting and performance workshops free to schools and community groups. A 60-metre street installation on Mitchell Street - the result of a community engagement project with Annie Hogg - runs across the full festival period.
The inaugural Plein Air event on 4th and 5th July invites painters and sketchers to take part in outdoor paint-outs in Clonmel itself and at nearby sites in Carrick-on-Suir, Cashel and Cahir, with the Suir Blueway and the Comeragh mountains as backdrop. The box office for ticketed events operates from Unit 12a in the Showgrounds Shopping Centre.
Clonmel is in South Tipperary, roughly two hours from Dublin and an hour from Cork. By train, the town is on the Waterford to Limerick Junction line, with onward connections to Dublin Heuston and Cork. JJ Kavanagh & Sons runs a direct bus service from Dublin to Clonmel, and Bus Eireann connects from Cork. By road, the N24 runs through the town and there is parking throughout the town centre, which is compact and easy to navigate on foot once you arrive.
Clonmel sits on the River Suir, with the Comeragh mountains rising to the south - good walking country if you want to extend the trip beyond the festival programme. There is more to see in Clonmel and across Co. Tipperary.
Heading to Clonmel Town Centre in Clonmel? Tipperary has plenty more to see. Read the Clonmel area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.