2026 West Cork History Festival

The West Cork Festival takes place over the weekend of 7-9 August and we will upload a number of talks to our website, free to view, on Sunday 23 August to mark Heritage Week.

The West Cork History Festival is for everyone who is interested in history. The theme of the 2026 programme is Boundaries: setting them and crossing them - political, cultural and social. Those who set the boundaries of the state will feature when Iain Dale and three of the contributors to his collection of profiles of the Taoisigh talk about some of their subjects. Physical boundaries will feature in Cormac Moore’s discussion of his book on the Irish Boundary Commission, and in Lewis Baston’s consideration of borderlands across Europe.

Crossing social boundaries is a major part of the stories recovered by Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick of the Bad Bridget project. Eva Gore-Booth activist, writer, and poet also transcended many of the boundaries of her time, Sonja Tiernan will discuss her life while Gabriel Cooney will discuss the boundaries between life and death in Irish pre-history.

A number of Festival talks will be uploaded to our website for Heritage Week.