Live Music in Derry

The Derry live music scene

Inside and just outside the walls, Derry's music calendar is compact enough to walk in ten minutes. The Millennium Forum on Linenhall Street is where most of it happens: a theatre programme published by the venue itself and all ticketed, running from tribute productions and the Ulster Orchestra to touring Irish names of the Phil Coulter, Paul Brady and Nathan Carter kind, with Friday, Saturday and Sunday 8pm shows the norm. Most tickets sit between £22 and £38, the biggest pop names reach £50 and more, and the Christmas and New Year weeks are reliably full, with a céilí band or a Luke Kelly tribute in the January programme most years.

The Guildhall on Whittaker Street is the second concert room, and its winter list is usually strong, the kind of hall where Declan O'Rourke, The Stunning, Brian Kennedy and Hothouse Flowers play, with a cluster of shows in the week between Christmas and New Year. It sells through its own box office. St Augustine's, the small church on the walls, has become a quietly excellent folk room, booking singer-songwriters like Martyn Joseph and Mary Coughlan for intimate seated evenings and the occasional Sunday-afternoon concert. The New Gate Arts Theatre at the walls takes a local band now and then.

For bands rather than seated shows, Sandinos on Water Street is the room. It runs a late Tuesday residency most weeks, themed weekend nights and touring alternative acts, none of them sold through a ticket site, and it is the one venue in the city where the night starts after 10pm. Door charges vary, so ask at the bar.

The north coast sits under the Derry heading too. Portrush Town Hall and The Station on Eglinton Street in Portrush book the occasional touring name or spoken-word night, and Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portstewart runs a small concert programme of folk and blues. Limavady, Bellaghy and Maghera have pubs and halls with the odd gig but no steady published programme.

The city's venues are tightly packed: the Millennium Forum on Linenhall Street, the Guildhall on Whittaker Street and St Augustine's on the walls are all within five minutes of one another, with Sandinos just down Water Street from the Guildhall, so you can pair a seated 7.30pm concert with a late bar set without a taxi. Derry's Halloween is the city's big street festival and the busiest week of the year for music, with themed nights at every bar and the Forum and Guildhall programming around it; the Jazz Festival over the May bank holiday weekend is the other peak.

Two things to know before you go. First, almost nothing is advertised as free: the city's pubs do not publish session schedules, so there is no regular published trad session, and the cheapest theatre tickets are around £20. Second, prices here are in sterling, with the typical ticket around £30. Fridays and Saturdays carry more than half the gigs, and apart from Sandinos almost everything starts at 7.30pm or 8pm.

Derry venues worth knowing

A short, opinionated list of where to go in Derry and why. Open any venue for its full upcoming calendar.

Traditional sessions in Derry

Derry's calendar is concert-led, and the city's pubs do not publish a regular trad session, though Peadar O'Donnell's on Waterloo Street and the bars around it have music most nights that is never advertised. The nearest traditional dates in concert form are the Millennium Forum's céilí band and folk bookings and the singer-songwriter run at St Augustine's on the walls. Across the border, Donegal's session pubs in Letterkenny and Kilcar are under an hour away.

Live music in Derry: common questions