Bloomsday Festival

05/06/2026

Ulysses in 60 Minutes Walking Tour 📖⏰
Join a lively hour-long stroll diving into the wild world of Ulysses and James Joyce for the Bloomsday Festival!

Though James Joyce lived most of his life outside of Ireland, Dublin would provide the backdrop for virtually all of his work, including Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

On a brisk stroll around the north inner city, our expert guide will explain the real-life inspiration behind some of Joyce’s most celebrated writing and will show just how central the streetscape of the ‘Hibernian metropolis’ is to the author’s life and art.

For more information and tickets, please see bloomsdayfestival.ie



In collaboration with The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

05/06/2026

The Royal Canal Odyssey is a truly immersive and unique Bloomsday Festival event. Part literary tribute, part endurance run, the Royal Canal Odyssey is a 100km run that is the first of its kind.

The run starts on Saturday, 13th June at 6am. Our journey begins, as Ulysses does, at the James Joyce Tower & Museum in Sandycove. The route will cover nearly the entirely of Dublin, from Blackrock and Sandymount in the south to Mountjoy Square and Glasnevin in the north. Runners will run along the Royal Canal, beyond the Deep Sinking, Leixlip, Maynooth, Kilkock, and Enfield, passing by several landmarks.

The run will end in Mullingar, where runners will pass Fagan’s Office Supplies, which appears in Ulysses as Shaw’s photographic business where Milly Bloom (daughter of Leopold) is employed. James Joyce probably stayed in the same building when visiting Mullingar with his father in the summers of 1900 and 1901. The run ends when we touch Joe Dolan’s statue on Pearse Street, after which we intend to rest our legs in the Greville Arms Hotel, which Milly mentions in her letter to Leopold in the Calypso chapter. The hotel’s Ulysses bar also houses a life-sized waxwork of James Joyce.

Ticket link and more info can be found on bloomsdayfestival.ie



In collaboration with The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

05/06/2026

Join us at The James Joyce Centre for a special Bloomsday Festival lecture by Kenyan writer Sahara Abdi on Sunday, 14 June at 3pm.

James Joyce’s Ulysses is often celebrated as a European modernist masterpiece. Reading it from a postcolonial perspective reveals resonances with the experience of colonial and postcolonial Kenya. Dublin, under British rule was not only politically constrained but culturally subdued. Joyce dramatizes these pressures through the lives of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. These texts speak to similar forms of marginalization and linguistic domination experienced in Africa.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, one of Kenya’s most important writers offers a lens for reading these resonances. His central argument in Decolonising the Mind is that colonial language is a tool of domination. “The domination of a people’s language by the language of the colonising nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised.”

Separated by time, both Joyce and Ngugi are reconstructing cultural memory under colonial pressure and they represent two colonial experiences responding differently to same imperial language.

This lecture juxtaposes Joyce and Ngugi to explore how both writers represent colonial subjectivity, the politics of language, and the dignity of ordinary life, despite their different historical and geographical contexts.

Sahara Abdi is writer, a literacy advocate and the founder of Northern Voice Trust, a literacy organization dedicated to fostering reading, writing, and creative expression in Northern Kenya. Through her writing, she amplifies the stories and identities of children from Northern Kenya. Her work blends storytelling and advocacy to promote literacy and representation for young readers across marginalized communities. She champions storytelling as a powerful tool for identity, belonging and social change.

The lecture is supported by the Embassy of Ireland, Kenya.

Tickets and more information can be found on bloomsdayfestival.ie



In collaboration with The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

05/06/2026

Join us at The James Joyce Centre on Friday, 12 June 2026 at 7pm as soprano Lorna Windsor and pianist Nicole Panizza present the European premiere of Chamber Music, with the poems of James Joyce and songs of Ross Lee Finney.
This collection of beautiful poems written by James Joyce between 1901 and 1904, published in 1907, has long remained in the shadow of Joyce’s close-following famous works: Stephen Hero, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. If Stephen Hero and Portrait of the Artist revealed much of Joyce’s personality, it can be said that there are clues, even strong hints, to those very personality traits and roots, also planted in the poems of Chamber Music. These are the poems of an exceptional young man, already marked by the weighty, vast culture he gained as a student and by his pithy and perspicacious views on life. Joyce, also a talented singer and passionate music lover, imbued his all his works with music, including the 36 poems of Chamber Music, which he deeply desired to be sung.

Tickets and more information can be found on bloomsdayfestival.ie



In collaboration with The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

05/06/2026

05/06/2026

04/06/2026

We are delighted to have Phelim Drew reading from Cyclops at Bloomsday Festival’s flagship event “Readings and Songs” at Meeting House Square in Temple Bar, free, 3pm – 6pm on 16 June 2026.

Phelim Drew is one of Ireland’s most respected actors and performers, with a career spanning more than three decades across stage, film and television. A graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting, he has appeared in acclaimed productions at the Abbey and Gate Theatres and is widely recognised for his roles in films including My Left Foot, The Commitments, Into the West, Angela’s Ashes and Bloom. His television work includes appearances in Ripper Street, Dead Still, Fair City and numerous other Irish and international productions.

Alongside his acting career, Phelim is also a gifted singer and storyteller, renowned for his engaging performances and his deep connection to Ireland’s literary and musical traditions.



In collaboration with The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

04/06/2026

Join us at The James Joyce Centre Dublin on Saturday, 13th June for this special Bloomsday Festival performance of a dance-theatre work by American dance company Danse Lumière.

Danse Lumière creates dance-theatre that connects arts, environment, and humanity. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, the company is known for adapting significant literary works for the stage, reimagining them through a fusion of dance, music, and theater. Danse Lumière’s work often engages with some of the most pressing social issues of our time. Founder and Artistic Director Kathryn Roszak is widely recognized for her stage adaptations of works by writers including Isabel Allende, Maxine Hong Kingston, Emily Dickinson, Tomas Tranströmer, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

“So engaging was last night’s performance. Lujan, from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, epitomizes why ballet remains vibrant and alive. I marveled at his nuanced and rich interpretations.”
— Theater Beyond Broadway, New York City

“The performance was a sophisticated and moving interpretation of Joyce’s world. Roszak’s work reflects a rare combination of literary depth, choreographic precision, and cultural sensitivity. She approaches Joyce not only with reverence, but with a dynamic artistic vision that resonates with contemporary audiences.”
— Liam Reidy, President, United Irish Cultural Center

For more information and tickets, please see
https://tinyurl.com/2r33fs5u

Two performances at 3pm & 7pm.
13 June, 2026
James Joyce Centre
Tickets €20

In collaboration with
The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

04/06/2026

tenderfire in association with The New Theatre presents EPIPHANY – a bold reimaging of James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead.”

In this one-woman show, Gretta Conroy takes centre stage at the Misses Morkan’s annual supper party. Gretta has it all: a house on the Kingston line, a gentleman’s family and a romantic night in The Gresham planned with her dutiful husband Gabriel. But when a love song from her past unearths long buried memories, Gretta is compelled to face the choices that molded her and the path that lies ahead. Themes of love, loss and longing are excavated under the ghost weight of the past.

Written & performed by Lesley Conroy, award-winning writer & IFTA nominated actress. Directed by Fiana Toibin.

Developed with support from Mark O’Halloran, The Arts Council, dlr Arts Office, DCC Arts Office, Cork Theatre Collective & Laois Arts Office.

Duration: 60 minutes

Tickets: €22.50 general/€20 concession

Schedule
12 June: 7.30pm
13 June: 3pm & 7.30pm
15 June: 7.30pm
16 June: 3pm & 7.30pm

Tickets and more information can be found on bloomsdayfestival.ie



In collaboration with The James Joyce Centre and supported by Fáilte Ireland and The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.