Kilkenny’s Toil & Trouble Festival launches bewitching programme
Kilkenny’s Toil & Trouble Festival will take place from October 29 until November 1
Set against the backdrop of one of Ireland's Home of Halloween destinations, this unmissable new festival brings a number of spellbinding events inspired by Kilkenny’s storied past from the 29th October - 1st November 2026.
The inception of Kilkenny’s Toil & Trouble Festival in 2024 was to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the burning of Petronella de Meath for heresy in Kilkenny city. She was tried in place of her lady - Alice Kyteler - who fled before her trial which was the first of its kind in Ireland. Nods to both women can still be seen throughout the city centre today, embedded in its history.
It has since grown to a full programme of events across the weekend that explores the societal attitudes towards women tracing back to by the spells cast on society during the witch trials in the 14th century at the festival’s roots. At its heart, it is also a celebration of women through captivating performances, informative talks and interactive creative workshops.
Paul Mockler - Head of Business, Festivals & Major Sports Events at Fáilte Ireland - said:
"We're pleased to support Kilkenny's Toil and Trouble Festival as part of Ireland's Home of Halloween. The success of the programme in 2025 demonstrated the strong appeal of authentic Halloween experiences rooted in Ireland's traditions and folklore. This year, visitors from home and overseas will have even more reasons to explore destinations across the island during the autumn season.”
“By working in partnership with local authorities and communities, we're showcasing the very best of our cultural heritage, creating distinctive visitor experiences that will encourage travel beyond the traditional peak season, generate economic benefits for local areas and support sustainable tourism growth.''
“It's been an honour to work on the programme for Kilkenny's Toil & Trouble Festival this year, in my adopted hometown of Kilkenny,” says festival curator Maria Schweppe of Schweppe Curtis Nunn.
“The programme encompasses music, spectacle, storytelling, performance, workshops and panel discussions from many well-respected artists and speakers. I hope it asks audience members to reflect on our history and the treatment of women, but also to celebrate them and their stories.”
At the launch of Kilkenny’s wider Home of Halloween programme at Kyteler’s Inn, Kilkenny County Council’s tourism officer Martina Comerford said: “We are thrilled for Kilkenny to be included as a Home of Halloween destination. There were events celebrating both the ancient roots of Halloween in Ireland and commemorating the Kilkenny witch trial across five weeks throughout the county. The growth of this year’s programming is exciting and positions Kilkenny as a must-visit destination this autumn for authentic, entertaining experiences.”
THE FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE
Cailleach: Macnas Take to the Streets
On Halloween night itself, Saturday 31 October, world-renowned spectacle makers Macnas bring Cailleach through Kilkenny’s medieval streets: a new street spectacle inspired by Petronilla de Meath and Alice Kyteler, and by the trial of 1324 that has carried their names for seven hundred years. Petronilla was burned at the stake. Here she carries the fire herself, leading a procession of ecstatic townspeople marching behind her to the beat of their drums, while behind them all Alice presides. Macnas’s signature large-scale puppetry meets live percussion, masked performers and special effects to reclaim Petronilla and Alice as the influential women they were, and to reimagine the witch not as a woman to be feared but as a revitalising force, shaping the elements, the land and the stories told about her. Processing from John Street to Canal Square from 6.30pm.
Highlights
The festival opens on Thursday, October 29 at the Watergate Theatre with a film screened to a specially commissioned live score. Set in medieval Iceland and shot in stark black and white, Nietzchka Keene’s The Juniper Tree stars Björk in her first leading film role, a waking dream of a film about two sisters who flee after their mother is accused of witchcraft. Composer Matthew Nolan performs this score with Seán Mac Erlaine, Lisa Dowdall and Kilkenny native Damien Lennon.
Medieval music meets jazz at St. Canice’s Cathedral on Friday , October 30 as Anakronos presents The Red Book of Ossory. The fourteenth-century manuscript preserves sixty songs written by Richard de Ledrede, the bishop who prosecuted Dame Alice Kyteler. Their melodies are long lost, so Anakronos, led by Caitríona O’Leary, a founder member of Anúna, have rebuilt them from medieval sources: tunes that could well have been sung in Kilkenny in the 1300s.
Music and Performance
Sing Along Social bring their mass-participation, no-mic-required singalong to Watergate Urban Park on Friday 30 October, in partnership with the Kilkenny Night Time Economy initiative. Led live by the Craic Mechanics, The Witches’ Ball is built around the women who have soundtracked generations of witchy women; Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Cyndi Lauper. Fancy dress encouraged.
At Cleere’s Bar & Theatre on Sunday 1 November, Dee Mulrooney unleashes her alter ego in Growler Herself: an eighty-six-year-old, drum-banging shamanic alchemist with a tongue like a lash, a heart of gold and absolutely no filter. Song, spoken word and razor-sharp comedy, equal parts ritual and riot. Come for the alchemy, stay for the grá.
The festival closes on Sunday night at Rothe House with SAMHAIN: Witches Are Wise Women, from June McGrane and Fais Moi Rêver. Here the witches turn out to be the Bean Feasa, the Bean Ghlúine and the Bean Chaointe; prophets, healers and midwives. Ancient Samhain meets today’s Hallowe’en in a tapestry of live music, tall tales, satire, mischief and ritual.
On Screen and On the Page
In 1895, Bridget Cleary, a twenty-six-year-old seamstress from Co. Tipperary, was killed by her husband, who had convinced himself, and then his neighbours, that she had been taken by the fairies. The case became known internationally as the last witch burning in Ireland. Bridget is the first film by Anne Williamson, who grew up two townlands away hearing the story at her grandfather’s fireside, and it won Best First-Time Female Director at LA’s Indie X Film Fest this year. Screening at Billy Byrne’s on Saturday 31 October, followed by a Q&A with the director.
Alice Kyteler’s story survives only in the words of the men who prosecuted her. Bright I Burn, Molly Aitken’s novel and a New Yorker and BBC Best Book of 2024, imagines her from the inside: an innkeeper’s daughter who built a fortune in a city with no place for a wealthy woman, married four times and outlived three husbands. Aitken reads and talks in the Parade Tower at Kilkenny Castle on Sunday 1 November, hosted by Anya Bergman, author of the international bestseller The Witches of Vardø.
Talks and Panels
Burning Woman asks why the burning of Petronilla de Midia in Kilkenny on 3 November 1324, the first person in Ireland to die at the stake for witchcraft, still matters. The first in an annual seminar series, it digs into the trial and the themes inside it: power, wealth, church and state, and who gets blamed or pushed to the margins. Joining the panel in the Parade Tower at Kilkenny Castle on Sunday 1 November are Dr Andrew Sneddon of Ulster University, a leading historian of witchcraft in Ireland; Dr Celeste McNamara, early modern historian at DCU; and Mary McAuliffe, Director of Gender Studies at UCD. With Ireland
holding the EU Presidency, the lens widens to ask how far women’s rights have really come across Europe since. Funded as part of Cultúr 2026, the Culture Programme for Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026.
Storytelling
The cure is the power held by a particular person, place or object to heal a particular ailment; the curse is its shadow, calling on the land to turn against the people living on it. For two years Sarah McKenna Dunne travelled the border counties collecting both from the people who still keep them, a tradition that has outlasted colonisation, famine and centuries of religious change. Cures & Curses threads Irish mythology through that journey.
Three writers, two performers and one afternoon of brand new ghost stories made to curdle the blood. MORB presents The Ghost Story Gathering in the top bar of Kyteler’s Inn, Alice Kyteler’s own house, on Sunday 1 November, hosted by Peter Dunne of the Petrified Podcast, with tales by John Morton and Mairead Kiernan brought to life by Amy Dunne and Ed Murphy. Arrive early and you can write one of your own. The ghosts are gathering.
Workshops
Prize-winning novelist Molly Aitken leads a two-hour workshop on writing historical fiction at the Mayfair Library on Saturday 31 October, drawing on her PhD in Creative Writing and History. How do archives, objects and the senses bring the past alive on the page? No experience needed, just a love of history. Free, booking essential.
Kilkenny artist and printmaker Blaise Butler leads Print the Witch! at the Butler Gallery on Sunday 1 November, a relaxed, beginner-friendly introduction to linocut. Sketch, carve, ink and print your own witch or folklore-inspired design, and take it home with you. All materials provided. Free, booking essential.
Free Family Fun
Step inside if you dare. Magic & Mischief at Rothe House brings a free, drop-in afternoon to the medieval house and gardens on Saturday 31 October from 2pm–5pm. Play the Bemusement Games in the courtyard to DJ Raven’s spooky tunes, brew up in the witch’s laboratory with Scientific Sue, print a storybook page with artist Blaise Butler, and follow the clues through the gardens in search of hidden treasure. Roving performers, free face painting, and little witches and wizards very welcome.