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music · Friday 17 July 2026 · 10:00 
Visual Arts Exhibition - King House
At King House · Military Road, Knocknashee, Boyle, Co. Roscommon
At King House · Military Road, Knocknashee, Boyle, Co. Roscommon
The Visual Arts Exhibition at King House is the centrepiece of Boyle Arts Festival, one of Ireland’s longest-running arts events. In 2026 the festival marks its 37th year, and the Main Exhibition at King House is how it opens - with work by leading artists drawn from across the island. If you want to see a wide sweep of contemporary Irish painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and sculpture in a single afternoon, this is the place to come. It suits art lovers of any level, curious visitors passing through Roscommon, and anyone who has never been inside King House and wants an excuse to finally go.
The Main Exhibition is curated by invitation, with places limited to artists selected from across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Work on show must have been completed within the past year and not previously exhibited, so everything you see is genuinely new. The range of accepted media - paintings, drawings, printmaking, photography, sculpture - means the rooms feel varied rather than repetitive.
The setting matters as much as the art. King House is a four-storey Georgian mansion built around 1720 by Sir Henry King. Roscommon County Council rescued it from dereliction in the late 1980s - sycamore trees were growing out of the roof - and spent four years restoring it. The house now holds the McAleese Collection, the Boyle Civic Art Collection, and a permanent exhibition on the Connaught Rangers regiment that was once barracked here. The festival exhibition takes over this backdrop each summer, so you get the art and the architecture together.
Most exhibitions during the festival run daily 11am - 5pm. The official Opening Ceremony for the 2026 festival takes place in King House on the evening of Thursday 17 July at 8pm, after which the visual arts programme begins in earnest.
Boyle sits on the N4/M4 Dublin to Sligo road, roughly 155km from Dublin - around two hours by car depending on traffic. From Sligo it is about 35km south, a straightforward 30-minute drive. Bus Eireann runs services on the Dublin - Sligo route (route 23) with a stop in Boyle town centre; check the current timetable before you travel as frequency varies by day. King House is on Military Road in Boyle town centre and is well signed from the main street. There is on-street parking in the town and a car park close to the house.
The festival runs across the town from 16 to 25 July, with music, theatre and open submission exhibitions alongside the King House show - so a single trip can fill a full day. 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.