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.
