RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival 2026
April 30th – May 8th 2025, Dean Crowe Theatre
Awards on May 9th, Radisson Hotel Athlone
Nightly Tickets on sale from 8th APRIL 2026
Nightly Tickets available from the Dean Crowe Theatre starting from 8th April 2026
The RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival is held under the auspices of the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland (ADCI).
message from adci chair
Each year the open finals in Athlone signals the climax of the Amateur Drama Circuit. As chair of the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland I am delighted to welcome you all to what promises to be a feast of drama over the next 9 nights! On February 20th, 19 groups were ready to take to the roads in our Open Competition, I want to congratulate all 19 groups for the contribution you have made to this year’s circuit, you can be extremely proud of your productions. Congratulations to our 9 finalists, I wish you the very best of luck as you take to the Dean Crowe stage may it be your best performance yet!! To the 34 preliminary festivals, thank you for your work, commitment, and hospitability to the groups and adjudicators. This year’s adjudicator for the finals Mr Padraic McIntyre will have the arduous task of selecting the winners, best of luck Padraic & I hope you enjoy the week.
Hosting the finals carries a financial burden, I would like thank RTÉ for their sponsorship of the Open finals, their coverage of the festival circuit on television, radio, & online is invaluable to amateur drama. Indeed, I want to acknowledge the generosity of many sponsors across the country who sponsor our preliminary festivals.
From the list of festival awards two awards stand out for me, The Abbey Theatre Award will be awarded to one of the finalists which will give them the opportunity to perform their play on the National Stage, a wonderful experience for any Amateur Group! Sincere thanks to The Abbey Theatre for their support of Amateur Drama. The Scholarship to DLI Summer School will give someone the opportunity to attend Summer School in Limerick this year to learn from the best tutors! Many thanks to the Joint Committee for their sponsorship of this award.
To Festival Director Michael McGlone & his hard working committee who have left no stone unturned in preparation for these finals I wish you every success for the next 10 nights, I’m sure it will be from the top drawer!!
To you, our wonderful & loyal audience, your energy, encouragement, & attention, create an atmosphere that allows these productions to breathe!! Thank you!
I wish you all safe travels and hope you enjoy the festival!
Yours in Drama
John Kean
Last updated 26/3/2026
The Draw
The Abbey
Schools Playwright
Fringe Festival
Confined Drama Play
Launch and Opening
gala awards
awards livestream
KEVIN BAKHURST
As Ireland’s national public-service media organisation, RTÉ is committed to supporting creativity among the young and not so young from a diverse range of backgrounds. RTÉ delivers this support on a daily basis across our services and through a range of initiatives and partnerships, including the wonderful celebration of amateur drama across Ireland that is the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival. Across the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, the RTÉ Choice Music Prize, 2FM Rising, Other Voices, Culture Night, This is Art!, and so much more, RTÉ provides an important platform to emerging and established artists, musicians and performers, of all ages and all abilities to share their stories, develop their creativity and ensure their voices are heard.
RTÉ supported 178 arts and cultural events all over the island of Ireland in 2024. This represents an 82% increase over the ten years since the scheme was re-launched in 2014, when 98 events were supported by RTÉ. The renowned scheme – which won the Business to Arts Special Recognition Award in 2018 – also increased the number of supported events year-on-year, from 170 in 2023 to 178 in 2024. The RTÉ Supporting the Arts scheme aims to promote attendance at arts events nationwide, and supports the full range of genres, from dance to opera, visual arts to children’s events, literary festivals, film and Irish-language events. In 2023, RTÉ delivered a 30% increase year-on-year in the annual number of campaigns supporting Ireland’s rich and vibrant cultural landscape. The scheme offers dedicated promotion on RTÉ’s television, radio and digital services, and extensive support across RTÉ’s social channels. With production services provided by RTÉ, in addition to promotional airtime, the RTÉ Supporting the Arts scheme is a lifeline to Ireland’s creative and cultural sectors.
For more than 20 years that we have supported the AIDF, RTÉ’s commitment to communities has strengthened as we have continued to recognise the vital role this festival plays in keeping our local communities alive. We are proud to work with the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival to foster creativity and acting talent through drama, and to bring the excitement and tension of this exceptional festival to audiences all over Ireland, through the partnership with RTÉ lyric fm, through RTÉ.ie and our social channels, and through RTÉ Radio 1.
Michael McGlone
Céad Míle Fáilte chuig an RTÉ Féile Dramaíochta na hEireann 2026, which our committee and members run under the auspices of the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland.
In this, the 74th year since the establishment of the All Ireland Drama Festival Athlone, it is a great honour for me to welcome you to this wonderful annual cultural feast that celebrates the rich theatrical tradition of Ireland.
This is my second year as Festival Director and I would like to sincerely thank our very dedicated and hard-working committee and loyal members who have given their all to ensure the success of this year’s festival. I have visited a few festivals on the circuit and experienced some fantastic performances and would hope to visit even more next year. In the current climate of geopolitical instability and uncertainty, it is reassuring that local drama can still entertain and challenge local communities across the country.
I warmly welcome each of the nine groups who will compete in this year’s final, and I wish them every success as they bring their productions to the Dean Crowe Theatre. We are looking forward to each night with great anticipation, and this year’s festival promises to be a spectacular display of talent, creativity and artistic excellence. My hope for them is that they reserve their best performance of the year for the Dean Crowe Theatre stage and that they appreciate and enjoy their shared amazing achievements in getting to the Croke Park of amateur drama here in Athlone.
Our adjudicator for 2026 is Padraic McIntyre, and I extend a warm Athlone welcome to him. This is the second Open finals for Padraic, and he brings a wealth of experience to the task of deciding who our overall winner will be this year. No doubt the discerning Athlone audience will be sure to provide valuable insights and feedback after each night. Some of them have been enjoying All Ireland performances for over half a century.
The official opening will be performed by Rick O`Shea of RTÉ Radio One, who, over the last number of years, has become a household name since he joined RTÉ in 2001 and has recently been appointed as the new presenter of Arena, RTÉ1`s flagship weeknight arts and culture programme. We wish him well in his new position.
I would like to welcome Rick to Athlone, and we are delighted that he can join us this evening to officially open this year’s festival.
We continue to enjoy the support of RTÉ, our title sponsor, and this year we are celebrating 22 years of partnership with our national broadcaster. We wish to thank them for their enormous contribution, not only to the All Ireland Open Finals and also their live streaming of our awards ceremony on Saturday 9th May, but also to the wider drama community. Their coverage of the festival circuit nationally on television, radio and online shines a light on the fantastic drama stories up and down the country. It also shows their commitment to supporting the arts in Ireland, and for this we are extremely grateful.
I would like to thank our dedicated local business sponsors and Westmeath County Council, who support us unfailingly and assist in making this festival one of the highlights of the year in Athlone. We also have the wonderful support of the Abbey Theatre, which, through its award each year, sees one of our finalists grace the stage of the Peacock Theatre.
I have received great support from the NEC of ADCI, and I also wish to thank the management and staff of the Dean Crowe Theatre for their kind assistance always in ensuring that the festival is a great success.
As many of you know, this festival is not just about nine nights of plays which form the centrepiece of the event. This festival has a host of fringe events that include many varied and entertaining shows and exhibitions that I urge you to check out.
Promoting the arts to our youth is a priority for our committee. The Schools Playwright Competition and the Athlone Film Festival continue to flourish and thrive in this regard.
After our nightly adjudication, the Festival Club will take place in the theatre bar, where you can meet the cast, enjoy some light entertainment and perhaps even participate in our new ‘Festivals Open Mic’.
Finally, last but by no means least, to you, our dedicated audiences, each night. I hope you enjoy the festival thoroughly and that it will be a year of wonderful experiences and fond memories of first-class drama.
Go raibh maith agaibh uilig.
Michael McGlone
Festival Director 2026
Padraic McIntyre
Padraic is a native of Bailieboro, Co. Cavan and trained as an actor at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. He has an MA in Theatre Studies from DCU. Padraic is currently Venues Manager at Ramor Arts Centre, Virginia and Townhall Arts Centre, run by Cavan County Council. He was a founder member of NOMAD Theatre Network and is still an active member.
Padraic was Artistic Director of Livin’ Dred Theatre Company based in The Ramor Theatre in Virginia for who he directed 15 professional shows from 2004 to 2017.
Writing Credits include:
The Little Dance Girl (Livin Dred) Carnival at Glenaduff (Ramor Players) Going and Letting Everyone Down (Caomhnu Literary Festival) The Voice (Roscommon Youth Theatre) A Holy Show (Ramor Players) The King of Ireland’s Son (Aishling Children’s Festival) The Lost Weekend (Ramor Players) The Hero of The Half Acre (Ramor Players.) His radio play Two Little Boys was shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Award on RTE Radio.
Padraic is currently acting in The Adventures of Shay Mouse a theatrical adaptation of Pat McCabe’s novel for children which is on a nationwide tour.
Padraic is the author and director of The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down which has sold out venues around the country and played The Olympia Theatre, Dublin in February 2026 for a record-breaking 15th Year.
THE COMMITTEE
Meet the team that work extremely hard behind the scenes to make this a success.