{"id":253182,"date":"2025-12-27T00:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T00:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/253182\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T00:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T00:23:10","slug":"belfasts-first-fleadh-cheoil-expecting-700000-visitors-and-impact-on-par-with-open-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/253182\/","title":{"rendered":"Belfast\u2019s first Fleadh Cheoil expecting 700,000 visitors and impact on par with Open \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hosting the Fleadh Cheoil<\/a> in Belfast<\/a> for the first time will create a tourism<\/a> legacy similar to that delivered by staging golf\u2019s Open Championship on the north coast, a tourism chief has predicted.<\/p>\n

More than 700,000 people are set to visit the city in early August when the world\u2019s biggest Irish music and culture festival and competition is held across eight days.<\/p>\n

It will only be the second occasion Fleadh Cheoil na h\u00c9ireann has been staged north of the Border, with Derry hosting the annual celebration in 2013.<\/p>\n

Tourism NI\u2019s director of events Aine Kearney said the Fleadh should deliver a significant boost to cross-Border visitor numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen the Fleadh Cheoil\u2019s attendance grow year on year and there\u2019s no shortage of aspirations in terms of what that\u2019s going to look like when it\u2019s hosted in Belfast in August 2026,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re expecting at least 700,000 visitors, and the economic impact is in and around \u00a360 million (\u20ac69 million). And that probably is quite conservative.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important for us because it provides an opportunity for us to provide a reason for people from the South to come north. Maybe for many of them, that might be the first time. But, also, what we have seen is a really, really high level of interest from the international markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Fleadh\u2019s potential to emulate the success of the Open, Ms Kearney added: \u201cI think it\u2019s definitely on a par in terms of its importance and what we see it doing from a legacy perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fleadh will host large-scale concerts and big-name acts but also a packed programme of street performances, pop-up gigs and community c\u00e9ilis.<\/p>\n

Ms Kearney said next year was about continuing the \u201cmomentum\u201d created by staging the Open in Portrush this summer.<\/p>\n

Independent research has suggested that the tournament generated \u00a3280 million in economic benefit for Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

An assessment commissioned jointly by tournament hosts The R&A and Tourism NI found that July\u2019s sporting showpiece at Royal Portrush Golf Club delivered almost \u00a390 million in economic impact within Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Further research indicated that exposure of the region to a global audience produced \u00a3191 million worth of destination marketing benefit. -PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hosting the Fleadh Cheoil in Belfast for the first time will create a tourism legacy similar to that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[19620,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,1109,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-253182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-bob","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-media","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115788684006272210","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}