- Kilkenny’s Toil & Trouble Festival runs from October 29 to November 1
- Macnas presents Cailleach street spectacle on Halloween night
- The festival commemorates the 1324 witch trials in Kilkenny
- Events include film screenings, music performances and talks
- Free family events take place at Rothe House on October 31
Kilkenny’s Toil & Trouble Festival has launched its bewitching programme for 2026, set against the backdrop of one of Ireland’s Home of Halloween destinations. The festival runs from October 29 to November 1 and brings a number of spellbinding events inspired by Kilkenny’s storied past. The inception of the festival in 2024 commemorated 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.
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.
The festival opens on Thursday 29 October at the Watergate Theatre with a film screened to a specially commissioned live score. Medieval music meets jazz at St. Canice’s Cathedral on Friday 30 October, as Anakronos presents The Red Book of Ossory, a fourteenth-century manuscript preserving sixty songs written by Richard de Ledrede, the bishop who prosecuted Dame Alice Kyteler. Music and performance events include Sing Along Social at Watergate Urban Park, Dee Mulrooney’s Growler Herself at Cleere’s Bar & Theatre, and a closing performance at Rothe House.
Maria Schweppe, festival curator, shared “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.”
