Duke Special takes the Deep Forest back to Mandela Hall

From 5 November, eleven days of music — including a full-album anniversary night, a punk exhibition and a new music trail — spread the Sound of Belfast across the city.

The Sound of Belfast festival returns from 5 to 15 November 2026 for eleven days of live music across the city. Produced by the Oh Yeah Music Centre, the programme stretches through multiple venues and closes on a reimagined traditional session. On 14 November, Duke Special will mark twenty years of Songs From The Deep Forest with a full-album performance at Mandela Hall, joined by special guests.

Charlotte Dryden, the centre’s chief executive, has highlighted a focused line-up that showcases talent across Belfast. The anniversary show sits at the heart of that claim: a hometown songwriter returning to an early landmark record in one of the city’s key halls, with the rest of the festival built around exhibitions, album launches and a new trail of gigs.

Twenty years on from the Deep Forest

Duke Special is a Belfast-based, piano-playing songwriter whose work has long mixed a romantic streak with a warm, distinctly accented delivery. His live shows carry a theatrical charge drawn from vaudeville and music hall. He has often brought an old-fashioned gramophone into the set or used sound effects from a transistor radio, turning the stage into something closer to a small variety bill than a straight rock set-up.

The run of records that followed the Songs From The Deep Forest era maps a restless catalogue. Little Revolutions arrived in 2009. The next year brought a cluster of projects: Duke Special Presents the Songs From Mother Courage and Her Children, the Huckleberry Finn EP, The Silent World of Hector Mann and The Three EPs. Later came Hallow in 2017 and the 2021 single White Ribbon, cut with Jolene O’Hara and Ruth McGinley. Playing the anniversary album in full at Mandela Hall therefore reaches back beyond that later stretch to the record that first fixed his name for many listeners, and does so on home ground.

Punk walls, new records and a city trail

The festival opens on 5 November with the exhibition Alter Your Native Land: Punk in the North 1976-2026 at Oh Yeah. Opening performances come from The Outcasts, Tramp and Éabha, tying the survey of fifty years of northern punk to a live bill on the same night. The show frames the movement’s starting point and its long aftermath without treating the music as a closed chapter.

New for 2026 is the Budvar Music Trail, which takes live music into venues across Belfast rather than confining the programme to a single room. Album launches sit inside the same spread of dates: Alana Henderson’s A Wilderness of Warning and Ryan Vail’s After Hours both find a platform during the run. The shape is deliberate — a mix of heritage display, fresh releases and nights that move the audience between rooms.

The closing event on 15 November is The New Wave, a reimagining of a traditional Irish session featuring Gráinne Meyer and Atóg. It brings the run to a close on a different register from the punk opening and the full-album theatre of Mandela Hall, and keeps the focus on players with a stake in the city’s current scene.

Tickets and full venue details will be available from the festival as the November dates approach. What is already clear is the balance Dryden and Oh Yeah have struck: an anniversary that honours a Belfast songwriter’s early work, a punk survey that runs from 1976 to now, and a trail that pushes the music beyond a single stage. Over eleven days in November the city gets records, rooms and voices in the same frame.

Tour dates

OCTOBER 2026

24 – London, Union Chapel

NOVEMBER 2026

14 – Belfast, Mandela Hall
28 – Cork, Cyprus Avenue
29 – Limerick City, Dolans Warehouse

DECEMBER 2026

11 – Portrush, the playhouse
13 – Dublin, Whelans
29 – Derry-Londonderry, Guildhall