MUSIC
By Nadine O’Regan
Reggie
Nigeria-born, Dundalk-raised rapper Reggie had a life-changing moment in 2025, when producer Fred Again remixed his song Talk of the Town, and invited Reggie to perform it on stage with him at the RDS in Dublin.
“It was monumental,” Reggie says. Now 26, Reggie first started making music in Dundalk at 14, and began releasing his drill-influenced original material at 17.
Since the Talk of the Town remix, everything has changed. “It’s a dream come true,” he says. “My Instagram DMs have been flooded. My Spotify streams are mental – right now, we have three million monthly listeners, which is insane.” Straight after the RDS show, Reggie disappeared back into the studio. He has new collaborations “Irish and international” planned for release in 2026, management in London, and more shows on the horizon.
Burglar
If there’s pressure on Willow Hannon – daughter of The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon – to live up to the achievements of her award-winning, chart-topping, musician father, you can’t hear it on indie act Burglar.
Formed in 2021 while at Trinity College Dublin, Burglar comprises Hannon and Eduardo Pinheiro, who was born in England and raised around the punk rock scene in his hometown of Goiânia, Brazil. When Pinheiro (23) moved to Dublin with his aunt and uncle, his first impression of music in the capital was “watching Sing Street when I was 15” and wanting to be just like the band’s lead character.
There’s a woozy, Strokes-y feel to Burglar’s first EP Unlucky, released last summer. “We get loud now and then but only for choruses,” Pinheiro says. In January, Burglar will unleash a new single, Lovey, and complete their debut album, with a headline tour across Ireland planned for February.
Florence Road
They’ve supported marquee names including Olivia Rodrigo and Wolf Alice, signed to Warner, and their fans already have a nickname for themselves: the “Flo-Roadies”. The future is looking bright for Florence Road, named after the road in Bray in Co Wicklow where the four members met as 12-year-olds at school.
Big on TikTok, where their fish-eye videos have gone viral, last June they played Hyde Park in London to 65,000 people supporting Rodrigo, and in March they will support The Last Dinner Party in north America.
It’s a long way from their early days in Coláiste Ráithín, where they performed Hozier covers, encouraged by their teachers. All aged 20 or 21, they’ve already attended the Brit Awards as guests and their hooky, earworm songs are star-quality. They will headline the Olympia Theatre in May.
“It doesn’t feel real,” says frontwoman Lily Aron. “It’s the kind of moment you imagine for years.”
Thanks Mom
“It’s been amazing to see the crowds grow,” says Erica Lee of Thanks Mom. “It’s a lot of young, cool people and because I write the songs, the biggest thing for me is hearing people sing the words back: that gives me a feeling in my heart that’s insane.”
For the Kildare four-piece, the biggest obstacle in front of them for the past few years has been their Leaving Certs. This year, finally all members will have finished school, leaving them free to concentrate on music.
Influenced by Olivia Rodrigo and Nirvana, they’re currently working on a new EP. “It’s acoustic guitars and loads of percussion and really layered, so I’m excited about that,” says Lee. The band name is a sincere ode to the efforts put in by Lee’s mother on their behalf. “I really love my mom, she’s great and she helps out a lot. She’s literally our chauffeur.”
Ria Rua
The name Ria Rua (Red Queen) isn’t just a catchy moniker, it’s a clapback to the taunts Clare Martin of Ria Rua endured as a redheaded kid in Meath. “I had loads of nicknames and I hated my hair, then I turned it on its head,” she says.
Ria Rua emerged as a drummer (she has drummed for Jiggy and Emma Langford on tour) and still alternates between drums and guitars on stage while singing, but these days Ria Rua is a fuller proposition live, including Chris Schuette on bass and Chloe Corcoran Hanlon on a second drumkit. With lyrics like “how can I legally dump you in a ditch?”, Ria Rua’s punchy approach is winning airplay on indie stations like 8Radio.
You can’t hear Ria Rua on Spotify – she won’t use the service – but raucous songs like It’s a Hit and Lovesick are worth tracking down. Her debut album arrives on February 27th, with a launch gig in Whelan’s in Dublin the night before. Fans of Nine Inch Nails and Sonic Youth should beat a path.
FASHION & BEAUTY
By Deirdre McQuillan and Simone Gannon
Lucy Arbuthnott
Model
Tall with long red hair, Dubliner Lucy Arbuthnott, aged 21, from Booterstown in Dublin, a final year law student at Trinity College, has had a successful year as a model walking for Valentino, Issey Miyake and Hermes (where she had to carry a red saddle on her head) at Paris Fashion Week, as well as for Marni in Milan.
She also featured in a fashion cover shoot for the How To Spend It magazine in the Financial Times in February. “That was super cool,” she says. A keen sportswoman at school in Mount Anville, she was spotted by a modelling agent from NotAnotherInt in Dublin at 16, and her first job at 17 was for Create in Brown Thomas.
In her first year at TCD in 2023 she signed up with agencies in London, Paris and Milan, and her modelling career has developed ever since alongside her studies. “[Modelling] was brutal at first, but now it’s a lot more fun,” she says. The youngest of three from a family of scientists, she was always interested in law, and in her final year of study she is focusing on how it relates to medicine. On an Erasmus exchange at Bocconi in Milan, a guest lecturer talking about intellectual property litigation in the fashion world gave her another perspective on how her two passions intersect.
“I am going to give modelling a proper shot, and when I am not studying (for her solicitors exams), I can model and when I am not modelling, I can study.”
Caolum McCabe
Fashion designer
Caolumn McCabe’s 16-piece debut collection “Persona” in September, inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s film, marked the 27-year-old Newry designer as one to watch. With its innovative silhouettes, wayward silk knitwear, oil slicked pieces, pearlised button tweed décor and hand dyed slip dresses, it was a tour de force from a talented creative who cuts, sews and pattern drafts, and believes the “touch of hand is really special”.
A love of fashion was inherited from his grandmother who was a dressmaker, and his tutors at the Arts University Bournemouth worked with McQueen and Galliano. After graduation he spent time with Vivienne Westwood and designer SS Daley (recipient of the LVMH prize) in London before returning home to reconnect with his heritage.
A job in a local hospital helped him pay for fabrics for his self-funded show. He describes himself as an emotional and conceptual designer, who wants to put more magic into fashion. He is careful about his next steps. “We won’t rush because this is something we dreamed up for a long time. There will be a chapter two collection.”
Hollie Marie Gallagher
Fashion designer
From Donegal, Hollie Marie Gallagher’s family ties to weaving are strong; the clothes in her Dare to Howl avant-garde fashion brand collection, in collaboration with Magee, merge Irish heritage materials with slow fashion principles and challenge fast fashion culture.
Her redefinition of the traditional Irish cloak, and her curvaceous oversized silhouettes in tweed and taffeta from her graduate collection at ATU Donegal, made a strong statement, marking a new direction for a heritage textile from a young local designer. Rosy Temple of Magee describes her work as “daringly modern with a relevant perspective”.
Gallagher credits her lecturer Eilish Kennedy with encouraging her to be bold in her approach to design. This year, the 23-year-old collaborated with other young designers at Dublin Independent Fashion Week, and her plans include future collaborations, internships and funding efforts.
A karate champion since the age of 10, she had to stop due to severe injury and surgery. Martial art has taught her about discipline, resilience and teamwork, qualities that will stand to her in her future fashion career. “I’m excited about opportunities in my underestimated county of Donegal, and I really want to be part of that.”
Sam Daly
Textile designer
From a family of skilled artisans in Stamullen in Co Meath, Sam Daly’s interest in textiles began during Covid when he taught himself to weave and machine knit. His aim was to produce something well-designed of good quality “that doesn’t produce waste”.
Having graduated from NCAD, his skills have already been recognised; his graduate collection was displayed in London, he won the DCCI’s Future Makers award in 2023 and the RDS Craft Award 2024, and was shortlisted for the Gucci Global Graduate Design in London.
In 2024, Daly, now 24, began working with Ireland’s Eye on the knitwear factory floor. He is now an assistant designer and was responsible for designing the company’s 2025 Christmas sweaters. He is also involved in the new collections for men and women in lightweight wool and cashmere, launching this year in March and September.
Susan Fox and Carly Colgan Bates
Founders of Ealú
Susan Fox and Carly Colgan Bates are founders of Ealú (pronounced “ay-lu”, meaning “escape”), one of Ireland’s most exciting emerging body care brands. The duo created the brand in 2024 after recognising how easily personal wellbeing slips down the list for busy women balancing work, family and life, and aims to offer people daily opportunities for self-care using premium body care products.
Every product is vegan and cruelty free and formulated and produced in Ireland, blending active ingredients with luxurious textures and memorable scents.
Eighteen months since Ealú hit the market, the brand has grown from an initial offering of three products to five, along with a line of accessories, stocked in more than 100 retailers, with multiple national and international awards earned along the way. In 2026, Fox and Colgan Bates are taking Ealú into spas, expanding their product range, and growing their community via wellness events and workshops. This is a brand poised to travel well beyond our shores.
FOOD & DRINK
By Corinna Hardgrave
Elizabeth Dunphy
Pastry sous chef, The Bishop’s Buttery
When Euro-Toques Ireland introduced its Rising Pastry Chef of the Year award in November, the first winner was Elizabeth Dunphy of The Bishop’s Buttery. Her dish, “Not Your Typical Apple Tart”, reworked a familiar Irish dessert with sharp, layered precision. Using apples from Con Trass’s Apple Farm, she built a caramel mousse capped with almond sablé, roasted the fruit with skins on to reduce waste, compressed apple with apple brandy for contrast, and finished the plate with blackberry gel and almond ice-cream.
Dunphy works under head chef Stefan McEntee and shapes the dessert menu at the one-Michelin-star restaurant. Her process is methodical: a notebook of sketches, ideas and technical notes refined until each element earns its place.
She began in hospitality at 16 as a part-time server at the Newpark Hotel, trained at Waterford IT, worked across several kitchens, then spent time as a pastry chef in US east coast country clubs before returning to Ireland. She has been at Cashel Palace for two years.
Shauna and Mark Froydenlund
Chef-patrons, the Fold
I first met Shauna Froydenlund at Pétrus, then owned by Gordon Ramsay, where Marcus Wareing was head chef and the restaurant held one Michelin star, later rising to two. When Wareing took over the site and reopened it as Marcus, also with two stars, Shauna and Mark Froydenlund were central to the operation.
After almost 15 years there, the couple – now married with children – left London for Shauna’s hometown of Derry to take over The Exchange from her father, restaurateur Mark Caithness.
Their new project, The Fold, shows what they can do independently. In a restored stone building in Ebrington Square, they opened their bakehouse at the end of October, with plans for a charcoal-led food yard and a 24-seat supper club. The bakery turns out sourdough, focaccia, Pastéis de Nata and cinnamon cruffins, followed later by pork-belly doughnuts and Japanese milk bread. The yard will serve prawn toast, jambon croquettes, house-fried chicken, shell-on prawns with honey and chilli, and slow-cooked lamb neck, while the supper club will draw on the couple’s Michelin two-star experience.
Nivene Sadick
Owner, Cairo 2 Cork food truck
Nivene Sadick opened her Cairo 2 Cork food truck outside the Paul Street Shopping Centre in mid-October. Half Irish, half Egyptian, she spent her summers in Cairo learning to cook from her grandmother; after the 2011 revolution she returned for five years, staying with family, working in a school and absorbing the city’s food culture first-hand.
She describes her approach as Egyptian-Irish fusion. The viral Egyptian Munch Box is the draw: chicken and beef shawarma with Egyptian-style mac and cheese, vermicelli rice, fries, pickles and garlic sauce – generous, fast and still rooted in Cairo street food. So too is the Cairo Crunch (Hawawshi): spiced lamb mince sealed inside toasted pitta with tahini and garlic sauce. The rest of the menu extends the idea – shawarma wraps, vermicelli bowls, loaded mac and cheese and Basha Bowls with lemon-dressed salad, plus falafel, sauces and sides. Sadick now plans to grow the business, potentially adding a second truck for festivals.
Zachary Nicoll
Sommelier, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud
When Zachary Nicoll joined Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud as a sommelier in October, he had barely unpacked before he was already working the room with a startling level of composure.
I saw him within his first few weeks: precise without being stiff, quick on detail, and tuned into the small signals that separate competent service from genuinely good hospitality.
He arrived from the two-Michelin-star Clove Club, where nearly three years under Emer Landgraf shaped a style of service that’s exact without being showy. When Cédric Bonneau moved to Dublin to head up the wine team at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, Nicoll followed. He says the wine to look out for in 2026 is Godello-based whites from Bierzo in Spain. He loves champagne. His favourite for special occasions is Egly Ouriets Les Vignes de Vrigny.
When off the clock, in the absence of a Burgundy budget, he likes the sharp, mineral styles of Jurançon, and suggests Jean-Pierre Robinot’s Bistrologie for anyone who claims to “hate” natural wine.
Maurice Deasy
Irish heritage wheat grower and brewer
While researching heritage Irish grain varieties for a brewing project on his family’s north Tipperary farm, Maurice Deasy found that Ireland cannot only grow hops, but has a heritage variety dating to the 14th century, brought from Brittany.
At Canvas Brewery he brews single-source beer using Irish-grown heritage grains malted on-site, his own hops, spring water and electricity from the farm’s screw-hydro plant. This sits within the farm’s wider shift away from chemical inputs toward no-till and crop rotation, prompted by falling yields and returns.
His interest in agroecology – farming the land as an ecosystem rather than an industrial process – led him to Talamh Beo, the grassroots group advocating for soil health, biodiversity and fairer food systems. Deasy argues that producing food that improves soil, water quality and emissions shouldn’t earn farmers the same payment as systems that damage them. He also supports anaerobic digestion for biomethane, arguing it works best when tied to food production: you end up reducing the carbon intensity of food and a byproduct of that is energy production.
ACTIVISM
By Una Mullally
Bánú
Frequently, discourse about the housing crisis is focussed on urban areas. But Bánú, a community action group founded in late 2023, highlights the housing crisis in the Connemara Gaeltacht, and Gaeltacht areas more generally.
Issues with planning, a lack of public or affordable housing schemes, the high cost of rent in areas deemed “tourist” rather than local, and the omnipresence of Airbnb short-term rentals as well as holiday homes often empty for large parts of the year, are some of the main issues highlighted by the group. Many of these issues cut across other areas of the country – especially the lack of long-term rented homes available – but what’s also relevant is the impact this is having on the Irish language.
Narratives about the Irish language “revival” are also disproportionately focussed on urban areas, but Gaeltacht areas are vital to the language surviving and thriving. Expect rural gentrification and the Gaeltacht housing crisis to continue to grow as an issue in 2026.
Jenny Maguire
Activist and writer
The former Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union president emerged as a strong voice within the student movement, particularly as one of the students who oversaw the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) encampment on Trinity’s campus last summer, which ultimately resulted in Trinity cutting ties with Israel.
An exceptional speaker, Maguire is appearing on current affairs programmes with increasing frequency, as well as writing opinion pieces for the Irish Independent. Maguire has the kind of energy that acts as a mobilising force; she’s also an excellent communicator with a sense of humour.
A strong voice in trans rights and LGBTQ+ rights more generally – especially as co-organiser of Trans and Intersex Pride Dublin – in an interview with the University Times last August, Maguire outlined economic justice as her main political cause, saying: “It doesn’t matter if someone is using my pronouns or not if they’re evicting me.”
Edwina Guckian
This Leitrim dancer, teacher, and organiser from Drumsna has an infectious energy and is an out and out doer. Guckian established Áirc Damhsa Culture Club and is also the artistic director of Leitrim Dance Project, which hosts Leitrim Dance Festival and the Effrinagh Crossroads Dance.
She was awarded the Gradam Comaoine TG4 in 2022, and in 2024 published her first children’s book, Sparks from the Flagstones. In an era of increasing appreciation for traditional culture amongst new generations, Guckian is an inspiring cultural figure, full of ideas and ambition. She closed out the year with an epic series called The Devil’s in the Dancehall with the Gralton Big Band, which toured dancehalls in Leitrim, Galway, Mayo, Clare and Donegal.
In December she also ran a Mummers’ hat workshop in Drumshanbo. Is dancing activism? If keeping the bright flames of traditions burning matters, which it does – from the Mummers to dancehall hooleys – then absolutely.
Irish Bloc Berlin
It’s not just in Ireland where solidarity with Palestine is pronounced, but also within the Irish diaspora. Perhaps the most mobilised and most vocal community of Irish activists and protestors abroad is the Irish Bloc in Berlin.
Since the outset of the genocide, protests in the German capital have been characterised by Palestinians, Arab immigrant communities, Berlin’s queer community, and the Irish immigrant community. The Irish Bloc has consistently showed up in solidarity with Palestinians, while navigating an increasingly violent context of police crackdowns on protest. Many have been arrested and beaten.
Irish citizens in Berlin continue to contend with various consequences of their activism, including accusations of police violence and surveillance, threats of deportation, arrests, charges and intimidation. Yet throughout, they speak of a strong sense of community and solidarity, and are consistent in pointing to the much more arduous situation in the city for Palestinians and people of colour.
Queer Sheds Network
Inspired by the Men’s and Women’s Sheds movements, Queer Sheds creates hands-on queer-led spaces where LGBTQ+ people learn and share practical skills. Initiated by Common Knowledge, the Clare-based social enterprise that teaches people self-building and other skills, in 2024 the first official Queer Shed in the world was established in Clare.
Recent events include Irish language conversations, blacksmith skill sharing, potluck dinner nights and experimental music demonstrations.
In 2025, a new Queer Shed began in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in Dublin. This year, Queer Sheds will run its third edition of the Faoin Tuath festival, an event where LGBTQ+ people in rural Ireland learn practical skills and spend time in nature, along with workshops, gigs and talks. The Queer Sheds manifesto states: “This is a meitheal of queers seeking belonging and creating change beyond the mainstream.”
FILM & TELEVISION
By Donald Clarke
Beth Fallon
Actor
“When people perceive Paul Rudd, they always think he’s an amazing person and he genuinely is,” Beth Fallon, now 16, tells me from her home in Kildare. She should know. She has just finished shooting her role as daughter to Rudd’s character in the latest musical drama from the creator of Once and Sing Street.
John Carney’s Power Ballad features Rudd as “a wedding singer who comes to Ireland”, she says. Nick Jonas plays an American pop star. “A song comes between them and, I don’t know how much else I can give away,” she continues, laughing.
Fallon, who attended Vicky Barry Performing Arts, has already had a brush with screen fame. She was electric as the title character in Louise Lives Large, a recent, acclaimed RTÉ series about a young girl readjusting after recovery from cancer.
“I learned to take my time and work out different ways to do the scenes,” she says of that experience. “Just enjoy what you’re doing while it’s happening.”
Aran Murphy
Actor
Aran Murphy, teenage son of Cillian Murphy and Yvonne McGuinness, has been creeping up the inside rail for some time. Back in 2019, he starred in Hamnet, a one-person show about Shakespeare’s son that played in the Project Arts Centre and The Abbey Theatre (no relation to Maggie O’Farrell’s book or the upcoming film).
“That was just incredible,” he says. “But then I didn’t do much for a long while.” Murphy was strong in Andrew Legge’s experimental feature LOLA from 2022. He hits big, in 2026, with good roles in HBO’s legal series War, and Taika Waititi’s film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Klara and the Sun. Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega are also among the cast.
“We shot in New Zealand, so that was pretty surreal,” he says. “Taika Waititi has been a pretty formative figure for me.” What next? College? “I’m telling people that I’m taking a preliminary year out, but that’s just my easy way out of that question. Ha, ha!”
Isolt McCaffrey
Actor
Rob Walpole, veteran Irish producer, cannot say enough nice things about Isolt McCaffrey. “We feel very lucky to have worked with her this early in her career,” he says. “Isolt is a preternaturally talented actor and is destined for great things.” The young Dubliner, a protégé of the drama teacher Anne Kavanagh, first registered in the BBC Three series Video Nasty, but I notice she has a credit in David Freyne’s zombie flick The Cured from back in 2017. She must have been tiny then.
“I was a little zombie child, and got all the blood and everything,” she says. In 2026, McCaffrey takes a major role in RTÉ’s comedy drama These Sacred Vows. Written by John Butler, produced by Walpole and Rebecca O’Flanagan, the show begins with a mysterious death following a wedding on a Spanish island. “It’s very funny,” McCaffrey says. “It’s a satirical comedy on people in Ireland and in Dublin especially.”
Leo Hanna
Actor
“Being an opera singer was on the cards for a while,” Leo Hanna says of early plans. I haven’t heard him sing, but he has the unavoidable presence that profession demands. He has worked consistently since leaving the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin. On stage, he was in Roddy Doyle’s The Giggler Treatment and – the opera influence – Terence McNally’s Master Class: An Audience with Maria Callas.
Then, he landed a role opposite Mark Rylance in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock in London’s West End. “Getting to work with Mark Rylance? How do you top that?”
Well, in 2026, we will see him take a significant part in Jon Erwin’s Young Washington, following the US first president in formative years. “It’s a very physical part,” he says. “A lot of walking around in mud.” Will that erase memories of Margo Martindale blowing his head off in Cocaine Bear? “A video that is played at every party I go to,” he says, chortling.
Jessica Reynolds
Actor
“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever taken on,” Jessica Reynolds says. “It was incredible. But it was tough. Real TV is not for the weak.” The Holywood woman (that’s Co Down, not southern California) is talking about her lead role in the upcoming Channel 4 adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s era-defining 1979 novel A Woman of Substance.
Adapted by the same network in 1984 – with Jenny Seagrove where Reynolds now sits – the epic follows the protagonist from domestic servant to head of a business empire. Brenda Blethyn and our own Emmet Scanlon also star. Reynolds is no neophyte. She shone as across-the-barricades love interest in Kneecap. She had a regular role in House of Guinness.
In 2026, you can also see her opposite Éanna Hardwicke in David Turpin’s highly anticipated drama Ancestors. But A Woman of Substance is the behemoth. “When you’re leading a TV show – and it’s my first time doing that – you have to be a bit of an athlete,” she says.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
By Gemma Tipton and Nadine O’Regan
Asha Murray
Artist
Working in a marvellous mash up of experimental film, sculpture and wool tufting (think narrative carpets), Limerick School of Art graduate Asha Murray explores life through a feminist lens. She was a finalist in 2023’s RDS Visual Art Awards; the RHA Graduate Studio Residency followed and she hasn’t looked back since.
“During lockdown, I found my trips to the grocery shops inspiring,” she says. “I thought about women’s places within the household: the chores, the roles, the rituals.” Films and tufted works from this period were based on lost shopping lists, found on her walks. “I look at recreating the consumer objects that creep into the background of our subconscious, and upscale these items into hand-tufted sculptures.” An added layer of satire makes for a rich visual experience.
2026 sees Murray in a major RHA group exhibition exploring consumerism, opening in February, and a solo show in Galway’s 126 Gallery, running from April 4th to 29th. “I feel very lucky to have had a studio for the past two years, but as that comes to an end, the stress of finding a space hangs over me.” Working as an emerging artist means, she says, “picking up a lot of different gigs to fund your practice, to make sure the work you need to make gets made.”
Djamel White
Writer
Djamel White left school in Dublin at 17, but quickly won a placement at Roddy Doyle’s Fighting Words initiative, where his love of writing and literature saw him move from an internship to becoming a volunteer mentor. An undergraduate and master’s degree in literature and creative writing at UCD followed, during which time he developed his craft.
Now in his late 20s, his debut novel All Them Dogs lands in March. A gritty gangland drama set in Dublin, it’s published by John Murray Press and Riverhead Books and has won advance praise from Marlon James and Anne Enright, who says his hero Tony Ward is a “bittersweet confection of self-defeating swagger”. “It’s easy to feel like what you want to make doesn’t matter,” White told this paper last May. But plenty of people are tipping this book as one of the debuts of the year.
Ellen Kirk
Theatre designer
Following her work as an associate artist with THISISPOPBABY, set and costume designer Ellen Kirk is a resident artist with the Murmuration collective at Project Arts Centre. Recent design credits include Konstantin for the 2025 Dublin Theatre Festival, and Pea Dineen’s award-winning Fringe Festival show, Raising Her Voice. She has also been working on her first feature film, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, written by Mark O’Halloran, which premiers in 2026.
“I love collaborating,” says the Dublin-based artist. “I love making big unexpected moments happen and developing an idea that I would never have come to on my own.”
Anyone at Glastonbury, Altogether Now and Electric Picnic will have seen her stage and production design for the likes of Soda Blonde and Kojaque, and in theatre she has been inspired by the work of Dead Centre, Broken Talkers and Landmark. “Being exposed to international festivals and venues at a young age definitely influenced me, and made me want to make ambitious, contemporary work.”
In 2026, she will be developing a new work with Murmuration, and has more theatre shows and feature films still to be announced. “A thriving art scene is so essential to a country’s wellbeing,” she says. “The lack of affordable housing, studio space, clubs and venues is depriving us of so much talent. Scenes need spaces to flourish in.”
Ana Kinsella
Writer
“Epic and intimate, funny and wise.” Who wouldn’t want those words festooning the cover of their debut novel, particularly when they stem from Roisín O’Donnell, this year’s winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year?
Due from Scribner in May, Frida Slattery as Herself was acquired after a hotly contested six-publisher auction and comes from journalist and author Ana Kinsella, who was raised in Dublin before decamping to London in her early 20s to study fashion journalism at Central Saint Martins. Her novel tells of Frida, who meets John Reddan in a Dublin pub in 2006: Frida is struggling to launch her acting career; John is winning a name for himself as a director. “It’s got Stoneybatter cottages and Palm Springs poolsides, a tortoiseshell cat and the Abbey stage,” Kinsella has said. “And it’s sort of a love story too.”
Muck
Maker
Also known as Michael Murphy of Wicklow-based Non Violent Cutlery, Muck uses traditional tooling, and adds a little bit of ritual to make modern marvels in wood. From chairs and cups, to sculptural spoons and “vessels for imaginary moments”, his current work is a homage to the ash, “queen of Irish trees”. The non-violent aspect comes from his realisation that “a spoon has no victims, unlike a knife and a fork”.
2025 saw Muck flat out making chairs and tables for Ómós, the much-heralded Laois eatery and sleepery opening in July: “Some might say it’s crazy to make 45 of them on your own with hand tools, but I’m a glutton for doing things the hard way.”
This year will also include a solo show at Dee Morgan’s Fort Gallery on Ormond Quay, and the release of a documentary about his work with Tristan Hutchinson. Muck will also be running workshops in the autumn. “I’d love people to know the value in having handmade objects in their lives, to know there are people scattered across the country creating beautiful pieces. Reach out and support your local makers,” he says.
Tanya Sweeney
Writer
Tanya Sweeney is already a well-established name in Irish journalism as a columnist and feature writer for the Irish Independent, but her debut novel should catapult her into a whole new area of renown.
Esther is Now Following You arrives in shops later this month, with lavish praise from the likes of Marian Keyes, Liz Nugent and Andrea Mara. The story pole-vaults us into the life of Esther, who one day sees Canadian actor and comedian Ted Levy walking in a park in London. Transfixed by the momentary encounter, Esther starts following him online, reading about his life as an actor, and joining his fan site as a “Tedette”.
Pitched as “Baby Reindeer from the stalker’s perspective”, the novel was snapped up by Transworld in a six-figure, two-book deal, and looks set to be the smash of 2026.
Roger O’Sullivan
Comedian
“I genuinely thought I’m going to move here and my life is going to change and they banned comedy.” Timing hasn’t always worked out for Roger O’Sullivan: the Cork comedian moved to London a month before the Covid lockdown kicked in, meaning cancelled gigs and few career prospects. Luckily, the tides are turning now.
O’Sullivan, now 32, won the Comedian’s Choice Award for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the summer for his show which explores his relationship with his farmer father via PlayStation games. An Irish tour is planned for April, and attendees can expect the same warm absurdist style of humour he showcases on his Instagram feed: one recent bit has O’Sullivan explaining the British really need to stop trying to own things – particularly time (with their Greenwich Mean Time and British summertime tags), and remember that time is really Irish and Catholic: after all, as he says, “there are 12 in the O’Clock family”.
Eimhin FitzGerald Doherty
Theatre actor
Eimhin FitzGerald Doherty got his start on stage with the Mullingar Arts Centre, before going on to study at the Lir, where he was released early to go on stage in a US production of Martin McDonagh’s Beauty Queen of Leenane.
“It was through Ronan Noone, an Irish playwright, based in Boston,” recalls the actor. “We came into contact by fluke [and] he gave me advice about the industry.” An introduction to Broadway director Theresa Rebeck followed, and so too did the part. “I was marked on the production as the final module of my degree,” he adds modestly. That was in 2024, and since then, he has appeared with the Gielgud Theatre in Juno and the Paycock alongside Mark Rylance, and at the Old Vic in Conor McPherson’s The Brightening Air (the play comes to the Gate in July 2026). And all that was before his Irish debut, this year, in Marina Carr’s The Boy at The Abbey.
“There was no acting background in my family, but we are all quite big characters,” he says, adding that auditioning is tough. “I’m still learning to strike the balance. It’s hard to completely invest myself into a character without getting attached and being really disheartened when I don’t get the part.”
That said, his next role is already lined up for 2026, “I can’t yet say what it is, but it’s quite an iconic and special part that has a lot of history”.
Neil Tully
Writer
Set in June 1963, at the time of John F Kennedy’s visit to New Ross, Neil Tully’s forthcoming debut novel The Visit has already drawn comparisons to work from Donal Ryan and Colm Tóibín. High praise, then, and luckily the authors themselves agree – Tóibín has called the novel “brilliant” while Ryan says it is “effortlessly lyrical, a stunning novel”.
Arriving in March from Eiriu Press, the Cork-dwelling, Ballina-born Tully, now 36, did a masters in creative writing at University of Limerick, fitting in his fiction-writing schedule around his day job as a dentist.
“For writing I need to switch off the dentistry state of the brain,” he says. “Writing is driven by real love. With dentistry you have to be more clinical and methodical. The last thing someone wants when you’re doing a root canal is someone getting creative.”
Anna Clifford
Comedy
Not every comedian works well as a presenter on the small screen, but Anna Clifford’s four-part series for RTÉ Player, Ireland’s Perfect Pubs, showcased her flair for low-key witticisms.
She was also a guest on the Traitors Ireland after-show, indicating her gradual rise in status in the comedy world. A graduate of The Gaiety School of Acting, Clifford first cut her teeth in drama: she has credits in Fair City and Harry Wild amongst others.
This year, in addition to her regular show Comedy for Witches, an astrology-led interactive comedy night, Clifford will tour her stand-up show Soapstar, which debuted at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2025 and reflects on her time as a teen in Fair City. The stage is set for her career to go to the next level.
SPORT
By Malachy Clerkin
Caspar Gabriel
Rugby
Vienna in Austria is nobody’s idea of the place to find the next star of Irish rugby, but the buzz around Caspar Gabriel is undeniable. Still only 20, he made his Leinster debut last October and has been fizzing around the AIL for Terenure for a couple of seasons now.
Pandemic aside, he has lived in Ireland since wowing the Terenure coaches playing for an Austrian school in an under-16 match in 2019. He will be Irish qualified next season. Maybe because he didn’t start his rugby life in Ireland, Gabriel has an X-factor about him that means his attacking instincts hit slightly different from everyone else around him. A brilliant kicker and passer, he has risen through the Leinster ranks as one of their most exciting backline talents.
Alex Dunne
Motor racing
Nothing is ever straightforward. There were times in 2025 when it seemed possible that Alex Dunne would land a job with one of the big Formula One teams in the coming year, but mooted moves to McLaren and Red Bull didn’t pan out. The Offaly driver had a magnificent debut year in the Formula Two drivers championship though, and his step into the big time can’t be far away.
Dunne is a self-made phenomenon, climbing through the ranks of a sport that hasn’t had an Irish driver in the top tier since the heady days of Eddie Irvine. He led the Formula Two ranks for most of the season before technical issues and on-track incidents saw his title challenge wane towards the end. But if he can tidy up the small things and keep building on his pure driving ability, his Formula One shot will come.
Ava Crean
Athletics
This almost never happens in sport – and especially not in the marathon. Ava Crean seemed to fall from the clear blue sky to come sixth in the 2025 Dublin marathon and win the women’s title. She is still just 19 years old and only took up running during the pandemic, starting off on the treadmill initially because she was too embarrassed to run outdoors.
The Limerick teenager announced herself with that run in October and now she has the chance to build an athletics career for herself, one that she never really considered up to now. She was a good enough basketball player to make the Ireland academy at under-17 so clearly she has sporting brilliance in her. But if she can win the national marathon title at just 19, who’s to say what she could be capable of as she gets older?
Patsy Joyce
Boxing
The men’s side of Irish amateur boxing is badly in need of a new star. Kellie Harrington, Aoife O’Rourke and Katie Taylor have brought in truckloads of medals over the past two decades but with the exception of Aidan Walsh in Tokyo, it has been a disappointing time for the men.
Westmeath fighter Patsy Joyce could be the boy to change all that. A nephew of 2008 Olympian John Joe Joyce, Patsy was the youngest member of the Ireland team that went to the World Championships in Liverpool last September. But even though he was still only 19, he still came away with a bronze medal in the bantamweight division.
Bubbly, energetic and a rapid puncher, Joyce makes no secret of the fact that he aims to be in Los Angeles fighting at the Olympics in 2028. The work for that starts now.
Ellie McCartney
Swimming
The problem with having a breakthrough year is that now everyone is watching. Nobody expected Ellie McCartney to make such a splash in 2025 but now everybody expects her to build on it in 2026. She won gold, silver and bronze at the world under-23 championships last year and made her first world senior final in August. Her progress is clear for all to see.
McCartney is from Enniskillen and swims out of Limerick. She specialises in breaststroke but won her under-23 medal in the individual medley so is comfortable as an all-rounder. At the European short-course championships in Poland in December, she made another senior final, this time in the 100m breaststroke. She has shown that she belongs at the highest level – now for the next step.
SUSTAINABILITY
By Joanne Hunt
Brilliant Ballybunion
Nature, food, creativity – that’s Brilliant Ballybunion’s recipe for community climate action. The enormity of climate change and biodiversity loss can leave the individual feeling disempowered, but by coming together and acting locally, we can transform how we feel and create change, the group believes.
Brilliant Ballybunion began with a call out to the north Kerry community for those passionate about nature, food or creativity to collaborate. Nature-lovers, farmers, bird watchers, photographers, sketchers, writers and ecologists came forward and so began a journey of creative climate action.
Outputs so far include the Ballybunion Nature Group, a 60-strong collective that has carried out a survey of the Ringed Plover, a tiny ground-nesting bird in decline in the area. The group protects nests and talks to walkers about the importance of keeping dogs on lead. Journaling and sketching helps collaborators to record and process what they are seeing, and inspire action.
“If we don’t know the names of the birds, the trees or the animals, how will we know when they are gone,” says artist and grower Lisa Fingleton. “If our eyes are not open to nature, we just don’t see the loss.”
Alicia Mateos-Cárdenas
Sustainability leader
Winning a global award at the World Chamber Congress last year was a career highlight for Dr Alicia Mateos-Cárdenas, sustainability lead for Cork Chamber of Commerce. She leads the Chamber’s collaboration with Cork City Council on a “Local Green Deal”, a model that unites business, government and civic partners through formally signed agreements that include measurable sustainability targets, clear timelines and shared accountability.
“Our model is not just Cork’s success, it’s a replicable framework for any city, anywhere. It proves that chambers are not only advocates of businesses, but can also be architects of sustainable and economic prosperity,” says Mateos-Cárdenas.
Originally from Zamora in Spain, a PhD in microplastics brought her to UCC. Post-doc research on compostable tea bags made headlines with some brands changing their manufacturing. She leads REEValue for Cork Chamber, a European Commission-funded project that advises food, beverage and transport industries on being more energy-efficient. “I focus on what I can influence, and how I can create positive meaningful change in the world around me,” she says. “Sustainability can feel overwhelming at times, but simple choices, consistent habits and everyday conversations genuinely matter.”
Brian Meredith
Organic farmer
Change can be hard, but since switching to organic farming, Brian Meredith hasn’t looked back. Returning from New Zealand to farm with his dad Keith, the pair run a fully organic suckler beef farm near Strabally, Co Laois. Planting diverse forage plants, such as grasses, clover and herbs has enhanced soil health and biodiversity, increased quality silage yields and reduced chemical nitrogen fertiliser by 100 per cent over three years. Planting new whitethorn hedging, broadleaf native and heirloom apple trees have further enhanced biodiversity.
“The biggest change has probably been mindset,” says Meredith, whose farm has been recognised by Teagasc for its progress in lightening the load of farming on the environment. Meredith wants to break down barriers with consumers – “that idea of, ‘l’ll produce the food, you stay outside the gate’ – I don’t like that,” he says. He hosts farm walks and through Social Farming Ireland people experiencing disadvantage come to participate in day to day farming. Hosting a local monthly tea break has forged bonds.
“I didn’t know all my neighbours that well, I only ever saw them when their cattle broke into ours, or ours into theirs. I found farming quite isolated and I figured other people did too.”
Shannen Healy
De-influencer
Posting as @_greengal on TikTok and Instagram, Shannen Healy is on a mission to make sustainable living something we can all do. With tips on everything from how to clean your Birkenstocks to prolonging the life of your gym gear, Healy’s smart and informative content shows how small, everyday changes can add up to a big difference, and maybe to a mindset change too.
After three degrees – in microbiology food business and innovation, and sustainability in enterprise – and work in the decarbonisation and renewable energy sector, Healy realised information about sustainability wasn’t being communicated in a way that was easily understood. And so began her work as a “deinfluencer” where she shares her own “imperfect” sustainable journey. “My page is about making sustainability more accessible to everyone,” she says.
She has blitzed high street shops to highlight misleading labelling of fossil fuel-derived jumpers, microplastic-shedding cardigans, and fast-fashion summer dresses already disintegrating on the shop floor.
“We are all going to be impacted by climate change in the coming years. We have to make a journey towards being more sustainable. It’s my hope that by making information more accessible, people can make better decisions, one at a time.”
Tullamore Lions Club
Peatlands can act as a massive carbon sink, but draining for peat extraction sucks the life out of them, making bogs emitters of carbon and damaging biodiversity. Tullamore Lions Club’s peatland conservation project, in collaboration with Birr Lions Club, changed this course for Clonbeale More bog in Co Offaly and is seeing its work replicated elsewhere.
“Like many other privately-owned peatlands, drains had sucked the life out of it, but we discovered we could reverse it,” says retired telecoms engineer and Tullamore Lions Club member Michael Carroll, who spearheaded the project for the club.
Partnering with the landowner, the group commissioned an ecology study, and then won a competitive pitch for Community Climate Action funding to build dams, install weirs and re-wet Clonbeale More bog. The result? Tonnes of carbon emissions saved every year, a significant boost to biodiversity so species and habitats in decline can recover, and a children’s book about it all.
Encouraging other Lions Clubs to follow their lead was the next challenge, says Carroll. Lions Clubs in Birr and Portlaoise have started projects, Ballinasloe is in talks with peatland owners and the club in Tullamore is about to secure a second site. “We want to ensure the benefits we have already experienced at Clonbeale More are replicated many times around Ireland.”
ENTREPRENEURS & TECH
By Ciara O’Brien
Liam Fuller
Founder of Source
Teenager Liam Fuller turned heads last year when his company Source raised $1.4 million (€1.19 million) in funding. But that wasn’t the first time he had commanded attention; Fuller previously went viral with a photo on LinkedIn taking a business call in a school bathroom stall. That stunt earned him a one-day suspension, but it also galvanised him into action; he left school at 17 to pursue business full-time.
He developed Source, a platform for retail stock ordering that uses agentic artificial intelligence that can carry out specific tasks with limited human intervention – to optimise procurement. He hasn’t looked back, using a family trip to Australia to meet cold-call investors, a move that eventually led to getting Square Peg founder Paul Bassat as a backer.
Now he is building the platform and eyeing a move to the US. “Age becomes irrelevant; it just matters whether you have something valuable and if they’re willing to pay for it.”
Meg Brennan
Founder of Polliknow
We may not always appreciate them, but insects play a vital role in nature. And while the contribution of the honey bee is almost universally acknowledged, the other insects who play an important role as pollinators barely get a look in. Climate-tech start-up Polliknow, set up by Meg Brennan, is trying to redress the balance.
It uses advanced sensors and computer-vision software to monitor insect pollinators – from butterflies to hoverflies – in their natural habitats, providing valuable real-time data on biodiversity without interfering.
Brennan designed the Polliknow monitoring device herself, and the company has been working with organisations who are seeking to monitor biodiversity on the land they manage, alongside biodiversity credit projects.
Finbarr Power
Founder of Sampla
Would you wear shoes made from apple skins? Sampla, founded by Finbarr Power, is making more sustainable footwear from apple-derived leather, a water-resistant material that is made from repurposed apple waste.
Add in natural crepe rubber for the soles, organic cotton laces and recycled polyurethane from the automotive industry, and you have footwear that ticks the sustainable boxes. The shoes are unisex and designed for casual wear. The range has been kept simple – the same design, but with different colours – although there may be additional designs in the works.
Power is also planning to keep control of the company, having previously dismissed the idea of looking for outside investment.
Zoe O’Sullivan
Founder of Lymphia
This year’s Irish national winner of the James Dyson Awards, Zoe O’Sullivan, booked her spot in the global competition with a simple yet impactful idea: a device to help patients perform lymphatic drainage massage to treat conditions such as lymphoedema, which affects up to 30 per cent of breast cancer patients, and lipedema, a painful swelling caused by an abnormal accumulation of fat cells.
The Maynooth University graduate created the device after close personal experience with lymphoedema, which affects around 20,000 people in Ireland, often as a result of cancer treatment.
The Lymphia device will help patients carry out manual lymphatic drainage in the comfort of their own home, using precisely sized steel balls and a feedback system to guide users in applying the correct pressure. A companion app will also instruct users on the correct techniques.
Lee Sherlock and Brendan Martin
Founders of Meta-Flux
AI is everywhere, and not always in a good way. But if Dublin-based biotech Meta-Flux has its way, the technology will usher in a new era of drug discovery – and a cheaper one at that.
One of the risks of drug development is failure, and with it comes wasted time, money and resources. But the company, cofounded by Lee Sherlock and Brendan Martin in 2021, is developing an AI platform that helps pharma teams validate drugs earlier, thus reducing waste and delays in drug development. Sherlock describes it as “building a bridge between preclinical and clinical”, giving a birds-eye view of the drug development maze and allowing companies to test out all the potential routes for drugs.
In 2025, Meta-Flux announced a $2 million seed funding round, backed by pharma executives from Pfizer, Merck and Gilead Sciences, alongside tech leaders from Google and Amazon. It has already begun commercialising the technology.