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nightlife · Saturday 18 July 2026 · 7:00pm 
Lunasa at Fiddler's Green Festival
At Fiddler's Green Festival, Rostrevor · Rostrevor, Co. Down
At Fiddler's Green Festival, Rostrevor · Rostrevor, Co. Down
Lúnasa are one of the most compelling live acts in Irish traditional music - five musicians who take the inherited canon of reels, jigs and slow airs and stretch them into something with real force and momentum. Their set at the 2026 Fiddler’s Green International Festival lands on the Saturday night of a week-long celebration that has been drawing folk and roots music fans to this small Co. Down village for 38 years. If you want to hear what traditional Irish music sounds like when it is played at the highest level, in a room that actually suits it, this is a reliable place to find out.
Lúnasa’s current line-up brings together Kevin Crawford on flute and whistles, Cillian Vallely on uilleann pipes and low whistles, Colin Farrell on fiddle, Ed Boyd on guitar, and Trevor Hutchinson on double bass. The bass is the thing many first-time listeners remark on - it gives the music a low-end drive that is unusual in a purely acoustic setting and makes the fast sets feel genuinely urgent. They also range outside the strictly Irish repertoire, pulling in tunes from Brittany, Galicia and Scotland, so a two-hour show moves through more ground than you might expect.
The Lúnasa concert is part of the Festival Folk Club, which runs nightly during festival week at St. Bronagh’s Social Club on Mary Street in Rostrevor. It is a proper seated indoor venue - warm, relatively intimate, and set up for listening rather than background noise. The wider festival programme across the week includes afternoon acoustic sessions at An Cuan, open-air performances in Kilbroney Park, workshops, art exhibitions, and a children’s festival with free family events. Arriving a day or two early is worth considering if the full week is possible.
Rostrevor sits at the southern end of Carlingford Lough, backed by the Mourne Mountains. From Belfast, the drive is roughly an hour south on the A1 to Newry, then follow the A2 along the lough shore. From Dublin, allow around two hours via the M1 and A1. Parking in Rostrevor itself is limited during festival week; most people leave cars on the outskirts and walk in, which takes no more than ten minutes from any direction. There is no direct rail service to Rostrevor - the nearest train station is Newry, from where local taxis are the practical option. Translink bus services connect Newry to Rostrevor, but check current timetables for evening return times before you rely on them.
The village rewards a little time before or after the concert - the waterfront at Kilbroney Park is a fifteen-minute walk from the square, and the forest trail up to the Cloughmore Stone gives a view over Carlingford Lough that is hard to forget. There is more to see in Rostrevor and across Co. Down.
Heading to Fiddler's Green Festival, Rostrevor in Rostrevor? Down has plenty more to see. Read the Rostrevor area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.