An application has been made to run 9 concerts in Marlay Park this summer. In previous years there were 5 concerts (2025) and 6 concerts (2022-2024). You have a chance to have your say on the license application until Wednesday 8th April 2026.
April 2026 update: thank you to everyone who got in touch with suggestions on how to improve the concerts. I have made a submission with 18 improvements we want to see for the Marlay Park concerts in 2026 which you can read here. For more background on proposed concerts for this year, you can keep reading below.
I think the Marlay Park concerts are overall a positive thing for the area. They bring a lot of benefits, but also challenges. They’ve been getting better and better in the past few years on how they’re managed but I still think there could be room for improvement.
The council make approx €1m a year from the concerts and most of this has been going into a fund for ongoing and future investment in Marlay Park. Local clubs like Ballinteer St John’s and Leicester Celtic also organise volunteer stewarding which is a great income generator for the clubs. So I fully support the Marlay Park concerts going ahead. What I want to see is better management of the events so that they have less impact locally and are a better experience for people coming to enjoy the concerts.
Marlay Park license application
Festival Republic Ltd have made an Outdoor Events License application to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to run 9 concerts in Marlay Park this June and July 2026. I’ve put all the proposed dates below. All the concert dates they’ve applied for have an advertised opening time of 4pm and a “curfew” of 11pm.
| Date | Act |
|---|---|
| Sat 20th June | Olivia Dean* |
| Sun 21st June | Olivia Dean* |
| Tues 23rd June | Lewis Capaldi |
| Wed 24th June | Lewis Capaldi |
| Fri 26th June | The Cure |
| Sat 27th June | Calvin Harris |
| Sun 28th June | Florence & The Machine |
| Sunday 5th July | Mumford & Sons |
| Tues 7th July | Pitbull |
*Olivia Dean is not listed in the license application but tickets went on sale since then
There doesn’t seem to be any mention of the Longitude Festival on the event license application or on the Longitude website. The application refers to “nine single day concerts” so I suspect this means there is no Longitude festival this year.
I encourage you to share your views, especially if you’ve had issues with how the concerts have been run in the past few years. There is no cost to making a submission and it can all be done by the survey link here.
My main feedback in my submission will be on these issues below. If you have any more issues you’d like me to raise, please let me know: ooconnor@cllr.dlrcoco.ie
- Traffic management: there are a number of estates that need residents-only vehicular access on the days of the concerts, that are currently not. Especially all roads and developments off Ballinteer Avenue. The traffic management in place needs to be more tightly managed this year too. In some areas, traffic management staff have left their posts before they were supposed to, so any traffic management plans in place have to be properly staffed and managed.
- Public transport provision: last summer Marlay Park was the only major concert venue in Dublin not to have additional Dublin Bus or Go Ahead bus services in place. Dublin Bus run specific services for Malahide Castle concerts, but they re-route buses away from Marlay Park during our concerts. The information provided by Dublin Bus and Go Ahead on re-routing the S8, 74, 14 and 16 buses was badly communicated and caused confusion among regular users of these buses and concert goers.
- Litter management: the concert promoters provide extra bins near Marlay Park and a clean up operation the next morning. There needs to be more bins, and in a wider circle around the park. e.g. all the way up Brehon Field Road.
- Security: the Garda/security presence at Marlay Park itself is always strong, but when I’ve walked around Ballinteer at night after concerts have finished, there seems to be little to no Garda/security presence 10 minutes walk from Marlay. Residents shouldn’t have to put up with 9 nights of thousands of people hanging around in front of their homes with no Garda presence at all. This is up to the event promoters and Gardaí to handle proactively. It shouldn’t be up to residents to be continuously making phone calls to Gardaí at all hours of the night.
- Noise: residents have reported to me that noise levels exceeded the allowed levels regularly. I want to see much tighter control on the noise levels and more noise monitors set up in the surrounding estates. Noise levels need to be managed in real time, rather than just going over the agreed noise levels and adjusting volumes for the following concerts. There are leaving cert exams in Ballinteer Community School on the 23rd June. Every year the organisers have stopped all morning/afternoon sound checks while they’re on and that will happen again this year. I will also look for there to be no sound checks on the Friday 19th June while exams are on (first concert is 20th June).
- Signage for concertgoers: a lot of concertgoers will walk to and from the Balally or Dundrum Luas and there needs to be much better signage for this. Similarly, after the concerts drivers on Ballinteer Avenue are being directed by their SatNavs into Woodpark as a shortcut to the M50. There should be large signs on Ballinteer Avenue saying “M50 straight ahead”
- Information for concertgoers: The information given to concertgoers beforehand could be better and I have some specifics I will share through the consultation.
- Active travel: the information poster put out by the concert promoters always includes where the car parking is in great detail, even though there’s very limited car parking available at Marlay Park. So there’s no reason why they couldn’t include more information on bike parking. A quarter of a million people live within 30 minutes cycle from Marlay Park. There is also usually limited information for people walking to Marlay Park.
- Accessibility options for concertgoers: in the last couple of years there’s been limited space for people with additional accessibility needs and limited space on the viewing platform. Before DLR grant the event license, they should require a larger viewing platform than previous years or more than one viewing platform.
- Reinstatement of grass areas: in previous years, after the concerts, the promoter has left the cricket pitch damaged after the concerts. It should be up to the concert promoter to reinstate the Marlay Park cricket pitch and any other facilities that are affected by the concerts so they’re in the same condition or better they were found in.
- Dedicated residents hotline: the event application says there will be a dedicated residents hotline on concert days. I would like them to extend this hotline to be open every day from the day before the first concert to the day after the last concert.
If you need any help with making an observation or any other feedback on how the concerts are run, please let me know ooconnor@cllr.dlrcoco.ie.
