OVER half a million people are expected to visit Wexford town next week when Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann comes to the town with a population of around 21,500.
The Fleadh – the world’s largest annual festival of Irish music, song and dance – will return to Wexford in 2025, but the following year, the host town or city is up for grabs - and Belfast is making a determined effort to bring the musical Leviathan to the banks of the River Lagan.
Anyone who has ever been to Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, aka the All-Ireland Fleadh, will testify to the sheer wonderfulness of it all.
Just look back at Derry in 2013, with the precipitous streets of the story chocabloc with people while the A-listers were playing on concert stages and teenagers and younger were playing on street corners or in shop doorways.
Reels, jigs, polkas, highlands and everything that was ever composed were rising high up into the Derry air.
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Families had come the length of the country and from farther afield to be there - and it will be the same, *if* the Fleadh comes to Belfast.
What are the chances of that happening? The best person to ask is, of course, Brendan McAleer of Ards Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ), the main sponsors of the Belfast 2026 bid along with Belfast City Council.
Brendan is now known mostly for his involvement with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, a non-profit cultural movement involved in the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music.
With over over 450 branches worldwide, Comhaltas also organised fleadhanna throughout Ireland and around the world, including Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.
Brendan started at the Dún Uladh Centre in Omagh, Comhaltas’s Regional Resource centre for Ulster, back in September 2006, but always had an eye for the future.
“We’ve just finished our new ‘vision document’ called Aistear 2030 which outlines our strategies and presents a roadmap for the future up to 2030, where we can achieve our aim of connecting communities through our culture,” says Brendan.
Those communities can be in Ulster, Ireland or in the Irish diaspora worldwide and many are regular visitors to the All-Ireland Fleadh.
For those who don’t know, the Fleadh comprises over 180 competitions in music, singing, dancing, storytelling and more, including the Senior Céilí Band competition featuring competing bands from across Ireland and from overseas.
As well as the competitions, the best of our musical performers will be tutoring hundreds of students while there will also be a week of events in the Irish language.
The true spirit of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, however, is captured in the myriad of informal street and pub sessions that take place throughout the host city during the nine days of the festival.
Could Belfast cope? What about venues? Accommodation?
Well, Brendan believes that Belfast has put in “a very strong bid.”
“I think the atmosphere in the city has changed for the better,” he says.
“People’s confidence in displaying their culture and connecting with Irish culture has really blossomed and we have people from all backgrounds coming to learn music and enjoy the music for what it is.
“And I think that the benefits of creating that space to explore and express your culture have been huge.”
A Belfast Fleadh would be great for Comhaltas but also great for society here as a whole.
However, as Brendan points out, it is an open bid process and bids from other towns and cities are expected.
“Belfast has put its name forward for the Fleadh for the past few years and they have been close to winning it on a number of occasions, but I would be confident that, whilst it is an open process, Belfast will see the Fleadh sooner rather than later,” says Brendan.
The hosting of an event that will bring 5-600,000 people of course will bring huge technical and logistical challenges but Brendan feels that Belfast and its surrounding areas are up for it.
“The city, we believe, has the correct venues, venues that can withstand the number of people that are coming to them and it also has a good variety of accommodation,” says the Comhaltas reachtaire.
“Some people come alone, some people come as families, so there will be a mixture of hotel requirements, bed and breakfast requirements, self-catering requirements, but also then the likes of the camping - campsites are very important during a Fleadh – they are the technical records, but equally important is the budget.
“This isn’t an easy event to put over, being able to have a budget in place that will sustain the Fleadh coming in is hugely important.
“But once you are able to tick those boxes, then you’re into a deeper conversation. What impact is the Fleadh going to have on the host, what’s the legacy of the Fleadh going to be because we’ve evolved from coming into a town or a city and looking for somewhere to host our event and heading off again.
“Now, we want to see that the event coming to the town is going to have an impact on its constituents for years to come.
“Is it going to be able to sustain music in the area and have a positive impact? Is it going to bring people together? That’s all becoming part of the conversation.”
And, for people who will decry the spending of money on a music festival, there are some hard facts to ponder.
The hosting of the Fleadh will cost around £2million, but the other side of the coin is that this represents a return of about £70 million to the local economy, going on the most recent figures.
“You’re looking at maybe 600,000 people coming into Belfast. With its improved transport infrastructure, easy connectivity to Britain and its airports for international visitors, you’d be talking about an economic impact somewhere in the region of £70 million,” says Brendan.
Around 27 per cent of visitors to Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann are overseas visitors, 18 per cent of those being from mainland Europe and North America, while the rest are from Britain, so a successful bid would be an opportunity to really put Belfast’s cultural offering on a global map.
But for now, it’s a waiting game.
Bids must be in by August 31. After that, a team from the organisers will visit the bidding towns or cities and a final decision will be made on or around March 25 2025.