Galway2020

Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture

1 Feb, 2020 - 31 Jan, 2021, Galway Events Calendar

About Galway 2020

Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture will be the largest and most complex cultural festival ever held on the island of Ireland. This year long event will run from February 1st 2020 to January 31st 2021 to coincide with the ancient ancient Celtic calendar. More than 1900 events across 154 projects, 170 partnerships and collaborations with local, national, European and international artists and cultural organisations from over 30 different countries make up the programme of events. Galway City will form a central hub for the festival but events will be held in the villages, towns, and islands off the Galway coast and will be based around the four fire seasons of Ireland’s ancient Celtic calendar, Imbloc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain.

See our guide to the highlights of What’s On in Galway in 2020.

Opening ceremony

Galway 2020 will officially commence on the 1st February with a spectacular weeklong series of launch events, culminating in a large two-hour public spectacle in the Claddagh area of Galway city. The official Galway 2020 launch event on Saturday February 8th at 5pm will raise the curtain on Galway’s year of events as European Capital of Culture and will involve live music, fireworks and other pyrotechnics. The team behind the spectacular ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympics will be orchestrating the opening ceremony. Wonder Works, led by Piers Sheperd and Jeremy Lloyd, will produce the event which will feature a cast from community volunteers from across Galway city and county.

Galway 2020 highlights

  • A Connemara mountain landscape will be illuminated as an epic spectacle by Finnish light artist Kari Kola.
  • American artist David Best, of Burning Man fame, will create a major new work with young people from Derry and Galway.
  • The Claddagh area of Galway and then a 4000 year old Connemara bog will play host to a giant mirror pavilion by Irish artist John Gerrard.
  • Druid Theatre will take Ireland’s greatest 20th century one-act plays to towns and villages across Galway county.
  • Dramatic new interpretation of literary epic Gilgamesh by Galway master performance artists Macnas, written by Marina Carr and designed by Julian Crouch.
  • Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale and its just-published sequel The Testaments, will also return to Ireland to take part in International Women’s Day celebrations.
  • J M Synge, a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, to be celebrated in new festival in Galway and Aran Islands.
  • Homer’s Odyssey presented on a tour of beaches of Galway.
  • Crossing the Line Festival, a pan-European festival of work made by Irish and European artists with intellectual disabilities.
  • Galway will join with Boston, Belfast and Nashville to host concerts by transatlantic stars of country, blues, gospel, folk and bluegrass.
  • Galway’s multiple music and theatre festivals will participate in Galway 2020 with enhanced programmes.
  • Unsung Project to explore, through light and sound, the lives of mothers and children who lived and died in Tuam mother and baby home.

For more information see: www.galway2020.ie

Background

The European Capital of Culture (ECOC) is a national designation and the initiative, which began in 1985. Galway won the Irish designation for 2020 on 20 Jul 2016 with Funding for event provided by the Irish Government, Galway City Council, Galway County Council, the European Union and private sponsorship. Galway 2020’s full programme was unveiled on September 18th 2019 with an aerial spectacle in Eyre Square, by French aerialists Gratte Ciela and Galway singer-composer Anna Mullarkey.

Galway 2020 Programme

Address

16 Merchant’s Road,
Galway,
Ireland

Directions

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