One of Dublin’s biggest and most anticipated festivals, Dublin City Council’s Bram Stoker Festival is back with live events across the city this October Bank Holiday Weekend. More than 40,000 people are expected to enjoy Four Days of Deadly Adventures in the first live edition of the festival since 2019. The packed programme celebrates the legacy of one of Ireland’s most treasured authors and sees incredible new experiences alongside the revival of some festival favourites for Dublin’s bravest souls. From an aurora borealis in Dublin Castle to the resurrection of Stokerland, this year sees electrifying adventures in unusual locations throughout the city.
Sure to set Dublin’s pulse racing with excitement is the Irish premiere of BOREALIS, a free, mesmerising installation of light and sound, which will create the illusion of an aurora borealis in Dublin Castle’s Upper Courtyard every night of the festival. An artwork by internationally-renowned Swiss artist Dan Acher, BOREALIS has wowed hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. Its lush visuals and soundscape utterly transforms the sky above your head in a breath-taking experience of true awe and wonder.
Now a firm festival favourite, Stokerland, the annual pop-up Victorian fun park, opens its Gothic Gates for families and the eternally young for longer than ever this year, with three days in St. Patrick’s Park (Saturday 29th, Sunday 30th and Monday 31st of October). Since 1904, families and children have enjoyed fun and games in this stunning park in the shadow of one of the city’s most-beautiful cathedrals, and our Gothic gathering of fun and games continues this Victorian-era tradition! Free to enter, expect rides, olde-worlde games, performances, macabre theatre and lots more.
On Hallowe’en night at the O’Reilly Theatre, Dreamgun Film Reads points their satirical laser beam at Bram Stoker’s titular 600-year-old demon in a new Film Read based on the iconic novel and every vampire movie that it inspired. Dreamgun’s hilarious Film Reads involve them rewriting iconic film scripts and packing them with jokes. In this special edition, step into a haunted pop-culture spookfest performed by actors and comedians who haven’t read the script beforehand but have seen Buffy.
For information on events, volunteering and tickets sink your teeth into www.bramstokerfestival.com.