Fontaines D.C. make Slane their own next June

Fontaines D.C. will headline Slane Castle in County Meath on Saturday 26 June and Sunday 27 June 2027, becoming only the third Irish act to top the bill at the venue after U2 and Thin Lizzy.

The Dublin band confirmed the first night after headlining Electric Picnic on 30 August 2026, when the Slane date was teased on stage screens. Demand was strong enough for a second show to be added for the Sunday. Special guests include Hayley Williams, Damien Dempsey and Madra Salach, with further acts still to be confirmed.

Tickets went on general sale at 10am on Thursday 3 September 2026 through Ticketmaster, priced from €89.25 including booking fee and a €1 donation to Focus Ireland, subject to a 12.5 per cent service charge capped at €10.50. An artist pre-sale opened at 10am on Tuesday 1 September and an MCD pre-sale at 10am on Wednesday 2 September; the second date shared those windows.

The announcement arrived alongside news of the band’s fifth studio album, Dopamine Chamber, due on 16 October 2026 on XL Recordings. The June weekends fall less than a year after that release and after the Electric Picnic headline that first signalled what was coming.

From Dogrel to the castle grounds

Fontaines D.C. met in Dublin and built their early reputation on concise, immediate indie-punk shaped by the city’s counter-culture. Support slots with HINDS, The Horrors, Girl Band, Franz Ferdinand and The Lemon Twigs and festival appearances at Electric Picnic, Hard Working Class Heroes and Other Voices fixed them as a live band before the records fully travelled.

The studio run began with Dogrel in 2019, then A Hero’s Death in 2020, Skinty Fia in 2022 and Romance in 2024. Singles from their early years — Hurricane Laughter, Liberty Belle, Too Real, Boys in the Better Land — set the tone; later entries including the 2023 set Skinty Fia go deo and the 2025 single It’s Amazing To Be Young kept their catalogue moving between albums. Headlining Slane places that arc beside the Irish names already written into the venue’s outdoor history: Thin Lizzy in an earlier era, U2 across several decades. For a band still working at pace, the Meath bill is a clear marker of scale rather than a sudden change of direction.

Dopamine Chamber and the summer bill

Dopamine Chamber will be the first full album since Romance, and the first the band will take into a two-night Irish castle stand. Further support names for 26 and 27 June remain unannounced. What is already fixed is the company on the bill as it stands — Hayley Williams, Damien Dempsey and Madra Salach — and the simple fact of the booking itself: two nights at Slane, ticketed through the September windows, with a donation to Focus Ireland built into the base price.

Slane has long been a proving ground for Irish rock on a large outdoor stage. That Fontaines D.C. now join U2 and Thin Lizzy as Irish headliners underlines how far the group have travelled since the late-2010s singles and the Dogrel rooms. The records have stayed sharp; the live reputation has not softened. The castle dates, and the album that precedes them, put both on the largest domestic platform the band have yet claimed.

What remains open is the rest of the line-up and how the new material will sit beside the existing set once June 2027 arrives. For now the facts are plain: two nights at Slane, a fifth album in October, and a Dublin band standing where only two Irish acts have headlined before.