← All events
music · Friday 3 July 2026 · 8:00pm 
First Friday Traditional Music Session at Home Rule Club
At Kilkenny Home Rule Club · Kilkenny Home Rule Club, Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny
At Kilkenny Home Rule Club · Kilkenny Home Rule Club, Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny
On the first Friday of every month, the Kilkenny Home Rule Club opens its doors for an evening of live traditional music - a regular gathering that has become a fixture in the city’s social calendar. It is free to attend, it starts at 8pm, and the kind of people who turn up are the kind who genuinely love trad. If you are passing through Kilkenny or spending the weekend, this is the sort of evening that gives a city its character.
Local and guest musicians take the floor in the club’s front bar, a low-ceilinged, intimate room where the music carries well and the crowd sits close. Sessions like this tend to build gradually - fiddles, flutes, uilleann pipes and bodhrán finding their rhythm together, tunes trading back and forth, a song thrown in now and then. There is no stage as such; the musicians sit among the drinkers, which is how the best trad sessions work.
The Home Rule Club is itself worth knowing about. Founded in 1894 to support the Irish Home Rule movement, it is the last surviving club of its kind in the country. The front bar still carries portraits of John Redmond and old political campaign material from the early 1900s, which gives the whole evening a sense of place that a purpose-built music venue cannot replicate. Membership is open to anyone for €10 a year, but visitors are welcome at the First Friday session without joining. The club also runs a Youth Trad Group on the last Friday of each month, so there is genuine commitment to the tradition here, not just atmosphere for hire.
Kilkenny city is well served from Dublin by Bus Éireann and Dublin Coach, with the journey taking around two hours. By rail, Irish Rail runs direct services from Dublin Heuston. The club is on John’s Quay, close to the River Nore and a short walk from the city centre. If you are driving, Kilkenny has several pay-and-display car parks within easy walking distance of the quays; parking is generally straightforward on a Friday evening once you are in early.
Kilkenny city rewards an unhurried visit - the medieval mile, the castle, the craft quarter and the lanes off High Street will fill a full day before the music starts. There is more to see in Kilkenny and across Co. Kilkenny.
Heading to Kilkenny Home Rule Club in Kilkenny? Kilkenny has plenty more to see. Read the Kilkenny area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.