By Staff Reporter
Copyright derryjournal
The ever popular County Derry arts festival is due to take place from Thursday, July 2, to Saturday, July 4, 2026. Stendhal is one of the largest and longest running independent music festivals in Ireland and following a difficult year in 2025, the team behind the event say that a few changes are in store for 2026 following attendee feedback. The most notable change is the return to the Thursday, Friday, Saturday format that was the norm for Stendhal for over 10 years which was changed to Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in 2025. Festival Director Ross Parkhill said: “We changed things up last year with the intention of trying to make the festival more accessible for people, but we learned that people were quite happy taking a Friday off work as long as they got the Sunday to recover for a return to work on the Monday. “That was the big lesson from last year, our visitors prefer to have the Sunday to chill out and recover a bit after enjoying all the festival has to offer. “Other factors like the bad weather and the unexpected, last minute cancellations of two of our biggest Sunday acts didn’t help us either but unfortunately as much as we pride ourselves on running an excellent event, some things will always be out of our control. “We haven’t completely given up on the idea of having something on the Sunday going forward but we’ll have a think about that and see what we can come up with.” He continued: “We always do a post event attendee survey, and the overwhelming majority of our guests told us that they wanted to revert to the old format and when our audience talks, we listen.” Ross added: “A massive thank you to everyone who showed up for 2025 despite the bad weather, your support of our event is vital to our indigenous music and arts sector and your enthusiasm and spirit for the festival carries us through what continues to be a turbulent time for the UK and Irish Independent festival arena.” Early Bird Tickets for Ballymully Cottage Farm are on sale now at the Stendhal Festival website.
