Armagh Pipers Club has listened to the global community of pipers and piping enthusiasts and has resurrected the William Kennedy Piping Festival, having reluctantly ended its 30-year run in 2024. In November 2025 the Club presented a smaller-scale William Kennedy Weekend, centred on a concert with the supergroup Lúnasa, supported by José Manuel Tejedor (from Asturias) and Sébastien Lagrange and Gaël Rutkowski (France). There were also many pub, hotel and youth sessions, and a lecture. With 2026 marking the 60th year of the Club’s tireless promotion of piping and traditional music in general, it seems right to revive the famous mid-November celebration of all forms of pipe-based music. Our one-off logo for 2026 features a piping phoenix!

With the Club’s management having just undergone a change in personnel, planning for the Festival is still incomplete, but the shape of the weekend is now clear. There will be four public concerts: one in honour of our late Musical Director, Eithne Vallely, which will mark the Club’s 60th anniversary with performances by a selection of the most talented alumni of its teaching programme; a concert featuring up-and-coming stars of piping; the main Saturday night concert, featuring a range of groups and soloists from around the world; and, for the purists, a concert with some of the best uilleann pipers around.

There will also be a return of the Mark Donnelly Academy of Piping, with a panel of top-class musicians providing expert tuition to pipers who are already at an advanced level. In addition to the teaching sessions, the Academy will also feature two events open to the public: a lecture by Peter Browne, and a presentation on the music of Nova Scotia featuring three great musicians. A special concert will be offered to local schools, and of course there will be the usual trail of sessions in Aonach Mhacha (Armagh’s cultúrlann, where the Pipers Club is based) and the Hole in the Wall Bar, the Charlemont Arms Hotel and the adjacent Turner’s Bar. 

With a little work still to be completed around contracting artists and setting up a booking system, please return to the website for more detailed information

William Kennedy

William Kennedy, after whom the Festival was named, was a blind craftsman from Tandragee, near Armagh, who lived from 1768 to 1834. He made several important innovations in the design of uilleann pipes. His biography forms a chapter of The William Kennedy Lectures, a collection of 19 essays based on lectures presented during the first 25 Festivals. The book can be ordered from our online shop.

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The Annual Willian Kennedy Piping Festival, from 1994 to 2024, made Armagh a place of pilgrimage for the worldwide community of those who love pipe-based music. Over 1,100 musicians made a toal of 2,300 appearances, representing some 40 national and regional piping traditions across four continents.

The cost of the festival, and the scarcity of public and private funding, caused the Club to call a halt after the 30th edition in 2024.

In November 2025, as a gesture of thanks to the musicians and audiences that supported us though those three decades, we presented the Willian Kennedy Piping Weekend – named, like the Festival, in honour of the blind craftsman from Tandragee who contributed significantly to the development of the modern uilleann pipes.

Like the Festival, the Weekend featured musicians from several countries (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, France, the USA and Spain), centring on a concert by the transatlantic supergroup Lúnasa. Other familiar elements include a variet of music sessions in pubs, hotels and the city’s cultúrlann, a special concert for school, and an expert lecture.

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• 2025 (1)
• 2024 (2)
• 2021 (7)
• 2020 (16)
• 2019 (1)
• 2018 (1)
• 2017 (1)
• 2016 (1)
• 2001 (1)

The 30th William Kennedy Piping Festival, an international festival of mainly bagpipe-based traditional music, took place in Armagh on 14-17 November 2024. 

The 30th edition of the WKPF included five public concerts, a schools concert, the Mark Donnelly Piping Academy, the 2024 William Kennedy Lecture, instrument workshops for beginners and improvers, and a number of free sessions in pubs and other venues. 

Artists taking part in the Festival included Paddi Benson, Colm Broderick, John Carty, Peter Coyle, Éamonn Curran, Tom Delany, David Doocey, Patrick Doocey, James Patrick Gavin, Matt Griffin, Jarlath Henderson, Marco Iamele, Caroline Keane, Sébastien Lagrange, Grace Lemon, Angus MacKenzie, Kenneth MacKenzie, Calum Alex MacMillan, Conor Mallon, Ross Martin, Michael McGoldrick, Pádraig McGovern, Peter McKenna, Eric Montbel, Máire Ní Ghráda, Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn, Caoimhín Ó Fearghail, Maeve O’Donnell, Conal O’Kane, Giorgio Pinai, Toner Quinn, Mark Redmond, Gaël Rutkowski, Aoife Smyth, Cadhla Tohill, Marco Tomassi, Cillian Vallely and Robert Watt. 

First organised as a one-off event by Armagh Pipers Club in 1994, as part of a cross-community “Armagh Together” series of events, the Festival was such a success that it was reprised in 1995, and then became a regular annual fixture. A total of 26 festivals took place up to 2019, drawing into Armagh a vast array of internationally renowned musicians, and aficionados from all over the world. It became one of the longest-running festivals of its kind in the world of piping, distinguished by its efforts to present every piping tradition rather than focussing on a single national instrument.

The Festival had to take a break in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but returned in 2021 – on a smaller scale than in previous years, to ensure public safety. The 2022 and 2023 editions were considerably larger, with over 40 musicians taking part, and the 2024 Festival had a similar number, bringing in a number of previous Festival favourites and a few first-timers who caught our attention over recent years. Eleven of those named above were making their first WKPF appearance, while the others have racked up 179 between them! Over its 30 years the Festival has featured – we think – 1,146 individuals, making a total of 2,304 appearances. 

Following the 2024 edition, Armagh Pipers Club took the difficult decision to terminate the Festival, which had consumed a large amount of the charity’s resources and had never attracted adequate external funding. 

William Kennedy, after whom the Festival was named, was a blind craftsman from Tandragee, near Armagh, who lived from 1768 to 1834. He made several important innovations in the design of uilleann pipes. His biography forms a chapter of The William Kennedy Lectures, a collection of 19 essays based on lectures presented during the first 25 Festivals. The book can be ordered from our online shop.

The 30th WKPF was partly funded by Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, which supported every previous edition, and by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Additional funding came from the Celtic Arts Foundation (Washington state, USA), O’Neill’s Music Shop (Gortin, Co. Tyrone), the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, Red Ned’s Bar and the Hole in the Wall Bar in Armagh, Armagh City Hotel, and Madden’s Bar (Belfast). Armagh Pipers Club met the substantial deficit from its own funds.

• 2026 (4)
• 2025 (1)
• 2024 (2)
• 2021 (7)
• 2020 (16)
• 2019 (1)
• 2018 (1)
• 2017 (1)
• 2016 (1)
• 2001 (1)