Maiden City Festival

03 August 2024, Londonderry

Runs to 10 August 2024

Now in its 26th year, the Maiden City Festival returns this summer with an outreach programme of roadshows across Northern Ireland and the border counties.

These mini versions of the festival include highlights like the Siege Museum Outreach vehicle, the living history actors telling the "Siege Tales", musical piping performances and Highland Dance.   

Another element of the outreach programme is the one-act comedy play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 12^th.  The play features five different characters from across the community who meet at a bus stop in Foyle Street on 12^th August, the day of annual celebrations on the Relief of Londonderry.  The production will enjoy multiple performances across communities in the city this year.  

Another new element for the 2024 festival is an Ulster-Scots Drama Summer School which will include a performance of a play – entitled 11th Night – around the issue of bonfires.  

The main Maiden City Festival week runs from 3-10 August and will see the city’s Walls and Memorial Hall packed with activities from early morning until late at night.  

The Skirl of the Pipes will feature piping, drumming, and Highland Dance demonstrations on Grand Parade on the city walls, while Siege Tales allows visitors to meet some of the characters who lived through the siege.  Join the living history actors as they share the events which took place within the city.  

The Story of the Siege is a promenade performance, telling the story of the siege from the closing of the city gates in December 1688, and takes place in St Columb’s Cathedral.  This will be supplemented with displays in musketry and canon firing as well as dialing it back to yesteryear with the always popular tea dances.  

Evening entertainment such as The Songs My Father Sang, Letters from The Siege, and the re-emergence of the Crimson Players provide a lively end to each evening. 

The festival will reach its conclusion on the final day with The Siege Pageant.  This is the traditional curtain fall on the festival as the Siege Pageant re-enacts the story of the siege at Carlisle Circus, before the 335th anniversary of the Relief of Londonderry parade will begin.  

For further information on this year’s festival, follow Maiden City Festival on Facebook.