Belfast is hosting Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann for the very first time this August, and there is no better moment to think about the music that has always lived in this city’s bones. From Sunday August 2 to Sunday August 9, 2026, Belfast will transform into a vibrant carnival of sound, colour, culture and craic, with pub sessions, street performances, céilí bands and All-Ireland competitions filling every corner of Ireland’s only UNESCO City of Music. Belfast has been telling its story through song for centuries. The Fleadh simply gives the whole world a reason to finally listen.
So lace up your shoes. Here is your musical walking tour of one of the most sonically rich cities on earth.
Start at Ulster Hall
The beautifully restored Ulster Hall is the natural starting point — home to the Ulster Orchestra and also the venue where Led Zeppelin premiered “Stairway to Heaven” to the world in 1971. Stand outside and let that sink in for a moment. One of the most famous songs ever written was first heard right here. The building has been at the centre of Belfast’s concert life for over 150 years and it still earns its place on any musical itinerary.
The Site of the Maritime Hotel
A short walk away sits the site of the Maritime Hotel, and this one matters enormously. It was here that Van Morrison and Them made their debut in 1964. The hotel is gone but the moment is not. A teenage Van Morrison, born in East Belfast, stepping onto a stage for the first time and beginning one of the most remarkable careers in the history of popular music. Worth a pause.
Good Vibrations, Great Victoria Street
Head to 102 Great Victoria Street and stand on one of the most important patches of pavement in punk history. Terri Hooley opened his record store Good Vibrations on the most bombed-out half mile in Europe, right in the midst of The Troubles, and it became the centre point for a burgeoning underground music culture in Belfast and across Northern Ireland. Hooley took “Teenage Kicks” to London, left a copy with BBC DJ John Peel on a Friday, and by Monday night Peel had played it twice — unheard of at the BBC. The Undertones signed an American record deal within the week. The shop may be gone but the legend is very much intact.
Kelly’s Cellars
Duck into Bank Square and find Kelly’s Cellars, one of Belfast’s oldest pubs and a cornerstone of the city’s traditional music scene for centuries. The Cathedral Quarter on a Saturday afternoon is packed with good craic, free-flowing beer, and a remarkable number of cover artists, but Kelly’s Cellars is where you come for the real thing — the kind of traditional session that has been happening in this city long before anyone thought to put a name on it. During Fleadh week, this whole area will be transformed. Come early, stay late.
The Duke of York and Commercial Court
Wander into Commercial Court, one of Belfast’s most historic cobbled alleyways, and find the Duke of York. The Cathedral Quarter’s maze of graffiti-splashed lanes and warehouses have always been the heartbeat of Belfast’s live music scene, and this corner of it has a particular energy that is hard to explain and impossible to fake. The walls here have absorbed decades of music, argument, and celebration.
Hyndford Street, East Belfast
Hop over to East Belfast for Van Morrison country. His childhood home at 125 Hyndford Street is a recurring address in his work, featuring in songs like “On Hyndford Street” and “Madame George.” It’s an ordinary terrace that became extraordinary through music — exactly the kind of landmark Belfast does better than anywhere else. Be respectful, it’s residential. A quick look and a quiet moment is all you need.
Cyprus Avenue
A short walk from Hyndford Street brings you to Cyprus Avenue, and it is everything the song promises. The avenue is lined with mansions, just as Van Morrison describes, and in 2015 he came back to play an open-air show there on his 70th birthday, with thousands gathering in the tree-lined street to watch. Queue up “Cyprus Avenue” on your phone, plug in your earphones, and walk the length of it. Dorky? Absolutely. Perfect? Without question.
Orangefield Park
Orangefield is the park that inspired one of Van Morrison’s most gorgeous and romantic songs on “Avalon Sunset,” and it remains a quiet, beautiful stretch of green that feels almost untouched by time. This is what he was writing about, the bucolic East Belfast of his youth, the place he kept returning to in song even when he was on the other side of the world.
The Oh Yeah Music Centre, Cathedral Quarter
End your tour where every good Belfast music journey should end. The Oh Yeah Music Centre is a former bonded whiskey warehouse in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter, founded to support young musicians and now home to rehearsal rooms, performance space, a café, and the NI Music Exhibition. The exhibition features memorabilia from Northern Ireland musicians including Snow Patrol, Van Morrison, and Stiff Little Fingers, and on selected tours you might even catch a live performance from a rising local act. As Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody put it when the centre opened, “What is needed is a nexus to focus musical energy into and to unite the Belfast music scene in a way that has been elusive until now.”
That nexus exists. You just walked through it.
Belfast has always made music that punched far above its weight, from Van Morrison’s East Belfast streets to the punk clubs of the Troubles years to the céilí bands that never stopped playing through all of it. The Fleadh this August isn’t a beginning. It’s a celebration of something that was always here. The city just finally has the whole world’s attention. Now is the perfect time to visit.
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann takes place in Belfast, August 2–9, 2026. For more information visit fleadhcheoil.ie, visitbelfast.com, and discovernorthernireland.com.
