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seasonal · Wednesday 23 September 2026 · Various 
Limerick Jazz Festival
At Multiple venues across Limerick · Limerick City, Co. Limerick
At Multiple venues across Limerick · Limerick City, Co. Limerick
The Limerick Jazz Festival is one of Ireland’s longest-running jazz weekenders - now in its 15th year and still pulling audiences who range from lifelong jazz fans to people who just stumble into Dolans on a Wednesday night and stay for hours. Five days of concerts, jam sessions, afternoon trails, and late-night double bills spread across Limerick City, it gives you the rare chance to follow jazz from a boutique hotel bar into a proper concert hall and back out to a riverside pub, all within easy walking distance. Good for couples, for solo music lovers, and for anyone who wants a reason to spend a long September weekend in a city that has a lot more going on than people give it credit for.
The festival runs across a cluster of well-chosen venues - Dolans Upstairs and The Terrace at Dolans, the Belltable arts centre, The George Hotel, the Savoy Hotel, and Steamboat Music among them. The mix of spaces matters: some nights are sit-down concert hall affairs with international guests on the bill, others are loose and loud in a pub setting where musicians trade solos long past midnight. Previous years have brought in artists spanning traditional jazz, contemporary European jazz, and free improv, alongside a strong showing from Irish acts.
Daytime is worth planning around too. The festival runs afternoon jazz trails where smaller acts play shorter sets across several locations, which is a good way to discover a musician you’d never have booked a ticket to see. There is also an educational strand - workshops and the Limerick Jazz Schools Project - and the Young Irish Jazz Musician competition, which regularly surfaces talent worth watching. The festival is funded in part by the Arts Council, RTE Arts, and Limerick City and County Council, which gives it a stability that smaller festivals struggle to maintain.
Full programme and ticketing details for individual concerts are published at limerickjazz.com. Some events are free; others are ticketed and tend to sell out.
Limerick is well connected by road and rail. From Dublin, the M7 takes roughly two hours; from Cork, the N20 or M20 is about an hour. Irish Rail runs regular services from Dublin Heuston and from Cork Kent; Limerick Colbert Station is a ten-minute walk from the city centre and the main festival cluster. Bus Eireann and GoBus also serve Limerick from most cities. Parking in the city centre is available at the Limerick Civic Trust car park, Arthurs Quay, and several multi-storey parks off O’Connell Street, though on festival evenings spaces fill up early and walking or a taxi from a further-out car park is often easier.
Limerick repays a full weekend. King John’s Castle sits right on the Shannon and is worth an hour; the Hunt Museum has one of the better art collections in provincial Ireland; and the Georgian quarter around Pery Square gives you good restaurants and cafes within easy reach of the festival venues. There is more to see in Limerick and across Co. Limerick.
Heading to Multiple venues across Limerick in Limerick? Limerick has plenty more to see. Read the Limerick area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.