Bloomsday in Dublin: Your Guide to June 16th
There’s no better time to be in Dublin than June, long bright evenings, the city in full summer swing. Every 16th of June, Dublin transforms for Bloomsday: a citywide tribute to James Joyce and his masterpiece Ulysses, where locals and visitors pull on Edwardian costume, quote literature on street corners and toast the day with a glass of something good. If you’re staying near Temple Bar, you’re right in the thick of it.
What is Bloomsday?
Bloomsday celebrates Ulysses, Joyce’s sprawling 1922 novel that follows one ordinary Dubliner, Leopold Bloom, across a single day, 16 June 1904, as he wanders the city. The festival takes its name from Bloom himself. First marked in 1954, it’s since grown into one of Ireland’s best-loved traditions. And you don’t need to have read the novel, few have made it cover to cover, to join in. The spirit of the day is playful, social and wonderfully Dublin.
When is it on in 2026?
Bloomsday falls on Tuesday 16 June 2026, marking 122 years since that famous fictional day. The wider Bloomsday Festival, run by the James Joyce Centre, runs from the 11th to 16th June, with more than 100 events across the city. So even if you can’t make the 16th itself, there’s plenty happening all week.
What to expect
Bloomsday is as much a street theatre as a literary festival. Expect straw boater hats, waistcoats and parasols drifting between events, alongside public readings, performances, concerts and guided walks. A signature tradition is the Bloomsday breakfast, a hearty Edwardian spread that, true to the novel, often features the very pork kidneys Bloom fries up in the book’s opening pages. Best of all, many events are free.
The walking tours are the heart of it: Pat Liddy’s guided Bloomsday Walk sets off from the Gate Theatre on the 16th, while the James Joyce Centre runs deeper tours in the days beforehand. Keep an eye out too for readings at Sweny’s Pharmacy, which still sells the lemon soap Bloom buys in the book. The full programme goes up at bloomsdayfestival.ie book ahead, as ticketed events sell out.
Raise a glass in Temple Bar
Half the fun is that Joyce wrote real Dublin pubs into the novel. The most famous is Davy Byrnes, just off Grafton Street, where Bloom stops for a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy, ordering exactly that is a Bloomsday ritual, and it’s a five-minute stroll from us.
When the readings wind down and the boaters come off, the celebration moves where it always does, to the pub. Settle in here in the heart of Temple Bar, raise a glass to Leopold Bloom, catch some live trad and let the evening unfold the way the best Dublin nights always do.
