Skip to content
Music Connections

UNESCO City of Music

This section of Music Connections follows Belfast City Council‘s work to back local talent and grow the city’s music economy since Belfast was named a UNESCO City of Music on 8 November 2021.

Belfast is one of only three UK cities to hold the title, alongside Glasgow (2008) and Liverpool (2015), and the only city on the island of Ireland. As it approaches five years as a City of Music this November, the designation has become something you can see and hear across Belfast, from bursaries and venue support to international exchanges and the biggest traditional music festival in the world.

The Council’s work is guided by Music Matters, its roadmap for music in the city, and by A City Imagining, Belfast’s cultural strategy. It’s delivered hand in hand with the artists, venues, festivals and organisations that make the scene what it is. Much of it also grew out of Belfast 2024, the Council’s year-long celebration that invited people across the city to reimagine its future through creative projects, with music running right through it.

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2026

In August 2026, Belfast hosted Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann for the first time. It was only the second Fleadh ever held in Northern Ireland, following Derry in 2013.

Over eight days the city welcomed more than 5,000 competitors from 22 countries. There were 438 official events in over 90 venues, more than 50 of them out in the city’s neighbourhoods, and 1,300 volunteers helped bring it all together. City centre footfall topped 1.6 million that week, close to double the same week a year earlier.

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann has since confirmed that the Fleadh will return to Belfast in 2027.

Backing artists

  • Micro bursaries with Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival: 20 musicians and bands receive £1,000 each year to make new work. Past recipients include Eve Belle, Conchúr White, Gemma Bradley, Wynona Bleach, Conor Mallon, Róise, Rebecca Rua, Fun Protestants, Lord Jane and Morgana.
  • Gradam Ceoil: run with The Duncairn and TG4, the bursary supports three young traditional musicians a year with funding and mentoring, along with chances to perform. The 2026 recipients are Jack McGoldrick (guitar), Eimear Magee (fiddle) and Peadar Connor (multi-instrumentalist).
  • Music Heritage programme: four major projects featuring more than 30 musicians, exploring contemporary takes on traditional music.
  • Sounds Atypical: with University of Atypical, nine disabled musicians were supported to deliver accessible, disabled-led events in 2025, with six more grants of £1,000 to £5,000 awarded for 2026.
  • Scott’s Jazz Club films: support for high-quality films of the club’s weekly sessions, given to artists to use and building an archive of Northern Ireland’s contemporary jazz scene.
  • Belfast Music channels: regular artist spotlights and sector news through the Council’s Belfast Music social media.

Growing the sector

  • Output: the Council is a major backer of Ireland’s biggest one-day music conference and showcase, delivered by Score Draw Music. The September 2025 edition brought together 750 delegates and more than 110 speakers, with 36 artists playing to 5,000 people across nine Cathedral Quarter venues. In September 2026, presented by Belfast City Council and Belfast City of Music, 28 daytime sessions at The MAC and Oh Yeah Music Centre led into a free evening showcase of 32 artists on eight stages. Among them were emerging artist competition winners Donnrua and Ellie Brétéché, chosen from close to 100 applications.
  • NI Music Prize and Sound of Belfast: a three-year partnership with Oh Yeah Music Centre. The November 2025 festival paid 166 local artists across 66 events, drawing 8,694 people.
  • City of Music Industry Sessions: free advice and industry connections, with recent sessions alongside Soultrane, Beat Carnival and Imagine Festival, including a jazz history night with an open jam and a percussion workshop with Korean band HOOLA.
  • WorkPlus music internships: four paid placements with local festival and event organisers.
  • Pathways into Music: a conference helping tutors and teachers guide young people into the industry.
  • Music Connections: this website, with its directory, resources, live funding listings and monthly newsletter for the sector.

Live music and venues

  • Music Venue Trust partnership: early grants helped five Belfast venues buy equipment and train staff. The partnership has since delivered Northern Ireland’s first Venues Day and put NI venues in the Trust’s annual report for the first time, launched at Stormont alongside the new Raise the Standard scheme for repairs and equipment.
  • Access: direct support for venues and festivals to improve disability access, plus the Gig Buddies scheme helping people with additional needs enjoy a night out.
  • Late-night buses: city centre services introduced in November 2025 to get gig-goers and night-time workers home.
  • Festivals: support for Soultrane, Belfast’s first soul and jazz festival, now in its second edition, along with Imagine Festival, LyndonFest and the city’s first Rap Festival, featuring Leo Miyagee, Quinncidental and Don Chi.
  • Civic events: local talent featured across the city’s calendar, including a City of Music stage at Belfast Maritime Festival and slots at the Christmas and St Patrick’s Day celebrations. In September 2024 the Council also backed a concert with the Ulster Orchestra and the BBC marking a century of broadcasting.

Young people

  • Crescendo Post-Primary Pathway: with the Ulster Orchestra, giving young people in North and West Belfast instruments and tuition, right through to playing in full ensembles. Students have gone on to pass ABRSM Music Medals and take up GCSE Music, and teachers report better attendance and engagement.
  • Teenage Kicks: a pilot of £2,000 micro-grants for alcohol-free live music for under-18s. Twelve events were funded, with organisers including Girls Rock School, the Irish Video Game Orchestra, EastSide Arts, The Black Box and Factory 61. This autumn brings The Factory Sessions at The Banana Block with VERA, Charlie Hanlon and The Davids on 12 November, and 100 Years of Jazz, two free Scott’s Jazz Club concerts for primary and secondary schools at St Malachy’s College on 27 November.

Belfast and the world

Through the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, Belfast connects its artists with music cities around the globe, with active partnerships in Hannover, Brno, Metz, Daegu and London, Ontario, and a newer link with Oulu in Finland.

  • Hannover: jazz artists Steve Davis and Scott Flanigan collaborated with the experimental Tonhallenorchester, and documentarian Elspeth Vischer and indie-punk band Cherym took part in Take Space festival. A new Brno, Hannover and Belfast jazz ensemble now includes Scott Flanigan and Andrew McCoubrey. After a first chapter in Germany, the samba exchange comes home as Rhythms of Connection, uniting Beat Carnival’s Beat’N’Drum with Hannover’s Tudo Azul at The Black Box on 20 October 2026 for Belfast International Arts Festival, with guests including Ciaran Lavery, Utropiks and Lotus Azul.
  • Brno: Gradam Ceoil recipient and accordionist Catriona Gribben took part in an exchange in the Czech Republic, collaborating with artists from Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Varaždin, Ghent and Daegu.
  • Daegu: following collaboration at the 2025 Daegu Global Forum, Korean band HOOLA brought their upcycled instrument project to Belfast in November 2025. In April 2026 Belfast City of Music hosted Daegu synth-rock four-piece Inaekkum at Ulster Sports Club as part of Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, with support from former CQAF bursary recipient Lord Jane.
  • Oulu: in September 2026 Tempest, Gráinne Holland with her new band Dúil, The Belfast Wren Boys and storyteller Eamonn Keenan travelled to the Irish Festival of Oulu, the world’s northernmost Irish cultural festival. It opened a new connection with Oulu, a UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts and European Capital of Culture 2026.
  • London, Ontario: folk artists Ciara O’Neill and Niall McDowell played a 50,000-capacity festival and joined an international songwriting camp. Belfast queer punk band Problem Patterns have since performed in Canada too.
  • Belfast International Arts Festival: UNESCO Day partnerships with Belfast International Arts Festival brought over Canadian duo Aimee and Aaron Allen, then Kansas City hip-hop artist Kadesh Flow and R&B poet Jass. Kadesh Flow returned with Kemet Coleman to record with producer Eulogy and local artists.
  • Berlin: Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble represented Belfast at Classical:NEXT.

Across the island

In September 2026 Belfast joined UNESCO Together, a new network linking UNESCO sites right across the island, from geoparks and biospheres to fellow Creative Cities Dublin (City of Literature) and Galway (City of Film). It launched at The Duncairn with a creative cities showcase, featuring a short film on Galway’s screen history from Ardan, a reading from Dublin poet Jessica Traynor and a performance by Amanda Fawn, Maria Nickolay and Erin K Hill.

One early outcome: 2026 Gradam Ceoil awardee Peadar Connor was invited to represent Belfast at the Galway City of Film UNESCO subnetwork meeting, performing for representatives of thirty Cities of Film from around the world.

To mark four years as a City of Music in November 2025, artists Friz and Gerry Norman painted a new mural on the Telegraph Building on Donegall Street.

What’s next

Belfast marks five years as a UNESCO City of Music on 8 November 2026. The Council’s 2026/27 City of Music workplan includes:

  • the first Belfast Music Forum, bringing the city’s music communities together
  • the first stage of a Music Business Accelerator programme
  • a sustainability toolkit for the music sector, developed with Native Events and launching here on Music Connections
  • funding for under-represented genres, with partners including the Sonic Arts Research Centre and Soultrane
  • routes for local artists into international conferences such as The Great Escape
  • work with Purple Flag on safety and access in the night-time economy

Find out more

Read more about the Council’s commitments to music and culture in Music Matters: A Roadmap for Belfast and A City Imagining, or look back on Belfast 2024.

Keep up with Belfast City of Music on Instagram and Facebook.