Cork Jazz Festival

Over the October bank holiday weekend, Cork City becomes the venue itself, with music spilling from concert halls, hotel ballrooms, pubs and street corners across the centre. Ticketed headline shows sit alongside a huge programme of free gigs, meaning you can follow a set schedule or simply wander between rooms and see what you find. The billing reaches well beyond straight-ahead jazz into soul, funk, blues and world music, drawing established international names as well as Irish players and younger acts working the fringes. Crowds are broad in age and often local, and the atmosphere leans social and unhurried rather than festival-intense. Because so much happens in and around licensed premises, evenings run late and the city stays busy throughout. It suits people who enjoy dipping in and out of venues and treating a whole city as the site.