Galway Comedy Festival is bursting at the seams with comedy brilliance, all part of a 70-strong line-up of international stars, homegrown comedy greats, and emerging talent, playing 69 shows across 16 venues over 7 days and nights. You’d best start planning your week of ‘carefully curated craic’.

Rich Hall
If it’s Galway Comedy Festival, then Rich Hall will be in town! The singing cowboy from Montana enjoys a special position as a much loved regular guest. The comedy of this Perrier Award (Edinburgh Comedy Festival) and Barry Award winner – part stories, part improvised country songs – was wonderfully described by Chortle: “He still embraces the easily romanticised idea of the grizzled road comedian, the travelling troubadour with every line on that notoriously craggy Moe Szyslak face telling a story.”

Dylan Moran
BAFTA and Perrier award-winning comedian Dylan Moran is bringing his brand new stand-up show ‘DOLLA HO’ to his homeland this autumn with choice servings of his thoughts on everything and anything – delivered with his trademark poetic panache.

Throughout the summer of 2024, Dylan traversed the highways and byways of Ireland for a ‘Work In Progress Wander’ which saw him craft hours of new material throughout 50 shows in 35 towns. In venues ranging from the backroom of a pub in West Cork, to arts centres in Donegal, fans got a front row seat for the creative process in its unpredictable form.

The fruits of these flights of fancy have now been distilled into a brand new hour of stand-up from one of Ireland’s comedy heroes.

Aoife Dunne
Fresh off her sell-out success at Edinburgh Fringe, Aoife Dunne is rightly regarded as Ireland’s most exciting new comedy voice. This Galwegian is a comedian, poet, storyteller, and by her own admission, an “absolute dose”. Aoife’s smash hit debut solo show Good Grief has alerted audiences at home and abroad to her razorsharp stand-up, and her painfully relatable storytelling has received the raviest of rave reviews.

Mark Nelson
Since winning the inaugural Scottish Comedian of the Year Award in 2006 – less than a year after his first ever open spot – Mark’s mix of dark humour, cutting observations, and superb one-liners has seen him firmly established as one of Britain’s comedy powerhouses, with “a talent that is simply obscene… a star in the making,” according to The List. He has supported Jim Jefferies, Jason Manford & Russell Kane.

Ian Coppinger
A mainstay of Irish comedy since the 1990s, Ian remains one of Ireland’s busiest comedians, regularly playing to packed houses at the Edinburgh, Melbourne, Montreal Just for Laughs, Glasgow, Galway, Dublin, Adelaide and Wellington comedy festivals. A first-rate improviser, Ian is a co-founder of The Dublin Comedy Improv (est. 1992), where he still performs every Monday night in Dublin’s International Bar – Ireland’s longest running comedy club.

DOORS: 19:00 | SHOW: 20:00 | Age 16+