A city transformed, imaginations ignited, by the most exciting theatre in the world right now.
Dublin Theatre Festival 2026
24 Sept – 11 Oct 2026
From 24 September to 11 October, Dublin Theatre Festival will draw back the curtain on extraordinary stories from Ireland and across the world. Over 18 days and nights, audiences are invited to discover work that challenges assumptions, provokes conversation and celebrates the power of theatre to connect, inspire and expand understanding of the world. The full programme is available at dublintheatrefestival.ie.
View the full programme coming to Project
Dignity
Amanda Coogan with Lianne Quigley, Alvean Jones and Dublin Theatre of the Deaf
24 – 27 September | Cube
Previews: €20 | Performances: €25/23
Performed in Irish Sign Language
This acclaimed collaboration returns to its enduring engagement with the work of deaf playwright Teresa Deevy, reimagining one of her most celebrated radio plays in the centenary year of Radio Éireann. “Leave your mind free to follow my words.” In Deevy’s 1939 radio play, listeners are invited into an unseen world.
In Dignity, audiences are invited into another invisible realm, following bodies, movement and sign as they reveal what happens beyond the reach of sound. Like Deevy, we have learned to listen differently. Through Irish Sign Language, we watch, sign and resist, opening a visual world that deepens our connection to her work and its transformation into a rich choreographic language.
Heroes of Tomorrow
Brokentalkers
25 Sept – 4 October | Space Upstairs
Previews: €23 | 28 & 30 Sept: €28/25 | 1 – 4 Oct: €33/30
ISL Interpreted performance: 1 Oct
Audio Described performance and Touch Tour: 2 Oct
“It’s a strange world now” – David Hasselhoff
This year. A major gallery in a capital city. A celebrated Scandinavian artist is about to present his latest work. It could be his last. Heroes of Tomorrow is a story of how we got here. It’s a story of art, power and protest. A story of possibility, connection and corruption. An epic tale of oil, trade, weaponry, technology, colony and creativity. Of Vikings, empire, exploitation and extraction. Heroes of Tomorrow is the latest work from award winning Brokentalkers, created in collaboration with acclaimed theatre maker Andy Smith.
Rebellious Hope
Company Philip Connaughton and Once Off Productions
30 Sept – 4 Oct | Cube
Preview: €25 | Performances: €30/27
Audio Described performance: 4 Oct, 1:15pm
Choreographer Philip Connaughton brings together seven internationally acclaimed dancers aged 46 to 86 and renowned composer-musician Mel Mercier for a striking new live performance charged with presence, urgency and defiance. Combining dance, live music and personal testimony, Rebellious Hope offers a rare encounter with performers whose vulnerability and virtuosity are shaped by decades of lived experience. Rebellious Hope explores endurance, desire, memory and asks what remains, what endures and what compels us to carry on.
4.48 Psychosis
Once Off Productions
6 – 11 October | Cube
Preview: €25 | Performances: €30/27
ISL Interpreted performance: Sun 11 Oct, 5pm
Radical, intimate and darkly funny, 4.48 Psychosis remains “a work of extraordinary beauty” (The New York Times) – confronting despair, lucidity, survival and death with devastating clarity.
Director Tom Creed and performer Marty Rea bring extraordinary precision and emotional intensity to one of the most influential plays of the last thirty years, in a rare opportunity for Irish audiences to encounter the work of one of the most challenging and controversial playwrights of the 20th century.
Content Warnings
Contains strong language and references to mental health throughout, including depression, psychosis, self-harm, and suicide, mental health, including but not limited to depression and clinical depression • isolation • dependency • suicide; attempted & death by suicide • psychosis • schizophrenia • eating disorders and disordered eating behaviours • borderline personality disorder (BPD) • self-harm (cutting) • violence • death • sexual assault • physical assault
La Parabole du Seum [Parable of the Sour]
Compagnie Dans le Ventre
8 – 10 October | Space Upstairs
Tickets: €35/32 | Performed in French with English subtitles
The starting point of La Parabole du Seum [Parable of the Sour] is Fear and the necessity it creates to organise in order to survive it. Rébecca Chaillon brings together performers who live on the margins and who actively engage daily with the future and its (im)possibilities.
She moves Heaven and Earth, including her home territory of Seine-Saint-Denis, to broaden the horizon of what is possible, composing a work at once astronomical and astrological which brings together text, performance, visual and sound imagery: a parable of venom and anger which seeks to spark dreams, laughter, empathy, and revolt against the coming fascism.
Panels & discussions
Festival Forum: Policy that Performs
29 September | 5pm
Space Upstairs | Tickets €5
How can we learn from our European neighbours and continue to spur on meaningful policy change that betters the lives of artists and arts workers, while simultaneously benefitting the exchequer? This talk will bring together speakers from across the EU with direct experience of innovative initiatives that support growth in the arts sector – the Basic Income for the Arts scheme in Ireland, the Belgian Tax Shelter, and the Intermittent Work Statute in France, as well as Section 481 in our own film industry.
Festival Forum: On Bodies & Borders
3 October | 4pm
Space Upstairs | Tickets €5
Borders are not just lines on a map, but physical, affective, and racialized experiences. Using Dead Centre’s ZINC as a jumping off point this conversation will explore–through the lenses of visual art, literature, frontline reportage, and the lived experience of migration–how the state enforces itself on the individual, how art maps what geography cannot, and the psycho-physical impact of transgressing and shifting borders.
Festival Forum: (dis) Ordered Publics
4 October | 1pm
Space Upstairs | Tickets €5
As digital algorithms increasingly fracture our shared reality into isolated echo chambers and our attention is auctioned off to the highest bidder, the physical theatre remains one of our last collective civic spaces. This multi-disciplinary panel explores the rise of “disordered counterpublics” – a framework developed by Eliot Higgins & Natalie Martin to describe communities built on comforting shared fictions rather than objective facts.
Join theatre academic Aoife Monks, theatre maker Jordan Tannahill and Natalie Martin in exploratory conversation about how these online patterns of behavior are bleeding into the auditorium and changing the social contract of live audiences. Does the stage still serve as a vital forum for civic discussion?
Festival Forum: How was it for you?
10 October | 12pm
Space Upstairs | Tickets €5
As the festival draws to conclusion, we take a moment to pause and ask – How was it for you? To help us answer the question, we have invited some of the most exciting voices in theatre criticism to lead us in a discussion of what we have seen at this year’s festival.
Natasha Tripney, from The Stage and the illuminating Café Europa, Helen Meany, The Guardian in Ireland, writer, artist and scholar Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone and Belgian journalist Filip Tielens make up our panel, chaired by Dr. Karen Fricker, editorial advisor of Intermission Magazine, Toronto.
If you saw some shows in this year’s festival, come with your questions and opinions and engage in a lively discussion.
Pan Pan International Mentorship Symposium Day
13th International Mentorship with Silvia Calderoni & Ilenia Caleo
9 October | 11:30am
Cube | Free, booking required
In 2026, Pan Pan welcomed Silvia Calderoni & Ilenia Caleo to mentor David Ferreira-Alves, Marta Mcilduff, Jilly McGrath and Renn Miano, after a competitive public callout. The Symposium Day is an informal event where the participants introduce and discuss some of the ideas and working methods that they explored during the mentorship.
A fascinating and unique insight into the way theatre is made, for audiences and theatre makers alike. The current mentors, Silvia Calderoni & Ilenia Caleo, will also give a short introduction to their work.
Young Critics Panel
Youth Theatre Ireland
11 October | 1pm
Cube | Free, booking required
The Young Critics are back! One of Youth Theatre Ireland’s most popular and innovative programmes, the Young Critics recruits a panel of young people from youth theatres across the country to experience a selection of hand-picked productions at this year’s festival.
Guided on their journey of critical discovery by expert facilitators, they learn how and why theatre is made, see incredible shows and voice their opinions.
Over the course of the festival, the Young Critics watch a selection of productions and present their critical responses at this panel.
Chaired by Dr. Karen Fricker, The Young Critics Panel is always lively as the young people share their views with humour, passion, and eloquence. Expect strong opinions and spirited discussion at this yearly review.
Date
24 Sept – 11 Oct
Space
Cube & Space Upstairs
Ticket Note
Please note that an additional €1.50 booking fee is applied per full price ticket at checkout
Genres
FestivalTheatre
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