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music · Sunday 25 October 2026 · 9:30pm 
Wexford Festival Opera Gala Concert
At National Opera House · High Street, Wexford, Co. Wexford
At National Opera House · High Street, Wexford, Co. Wexford
The Gala Concert is a long-standing Wexford Festival Opera tradition, a late-evening show where the artists performing across that year’s festival step out of their staged roles to share the music they personally love, described by the festival as “the arias and songs that have shaped their journeys and captured their hearts.” Rather than a formal programme built around a theme, it runs as a warmer, more personal evening, mixing humour with genuine musical brilliance as performers take the audience through opera and beyond its usual boundaries. All of the artists involved donate their time for the night, with the concert supporting the festival’s future rather than functioning as a standard ticketed show for the artists themselves. Its late 9.30pm start places it after the evening’s main opera performance, making it a natural second stop for festival-goers already in Wexford town for the night.
Because the singers choose their own material rather than working from a fixed festival programme, the Gala Concert tends to range far wider than the mainstage productions, taking in operetta, musical theatre and popular song alongside grand opera. That informality, combined with the late slot and the sense that the performers are genuinely off-duty, has made it one of the more talked-about nights of the festival calendar over the years, distinct in tone from both the formal mainstage operas and the more solemn 75th anniversary Croí na Féile gala earlier in the same festival.
The National Opera House is on High Street in the centre of Wexford town, within walking distance of O’Hanrahan train station and the main quayfront car parks. Irish Rail runs from Dublin Connolly to Wexford in around two hours, and Bus Éireann and Wexford Bus both serve the town centre directly.
Heading to National Opera House in Wexford? Wexford has plenty more to see. Read the Wexford area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.