From Monday the capital marks forty years since his death with film, talks, a photography show and gigs — the IFI screening lands on the final Sunday.
Dublin City Council and Foggy Notions open MusicTown 2026 on Monday 28 September. It runs through to Sunday 4 October, across venues including the National Concert Hall, Studio 10, St Agnes in Crumlin and the Irish Film Institute. The week-long programme celebrates Philip Lynott, marking forty years since the Thin Lizzy frontman’s death in 1986.
Concerts, talks, a photography exhibition and a documentary screening form the core. The organisers released the outline in early September and added further details in mid-September. At the time of writing, no further events beyond those already listed have been confirmed.
Songs For While I’m Away
On Sunday 4 October at 1.30pm, the Irish Film Institute screens Phil Lynott: Songs For While I’m Away, the 2020 documentary directed by Emer Reynolds. A live interview with Reynolds, conducted by comedian and Thin Lizzy fan Killian Sundermann, follows the film. The screening sits at the close of the week and anchors the film strand of the programme: not a one-night footnote but the event that gathers the film’s craft and the audience that still lives with the songs.
Reynolds’s film has already done the work of placing Lynott’s writing and stage presence in plain view. MusicTown’s decision to pair the screening with a live conversation keeps the focus on how that work was made and how it is remembered, rather than on ceremony alone. For a station and a readership that treat the records and the gigs as the story, that is the right emphasis.
Talks, panels and Lost Love of Romeo
The opening day, Monday 28 September, brings the panel Young, Gifted, Gorm & Gaelach to the National Concert Hall, with Emma Dabiri and Maureen Onwunali among the speakers. From 1 to 4 October, Studio 10 hosts the four-day Lost Love of Romeo exhibition, drawing contributions from Jim Fitzpatrick, Chalkie Davies and others. Further talks include Vagabond of the Western World, with Jim Fitzpatrick and Eamon Carr.
Some of the talks and the exhibition are free. The Glasshouse concert is priced at €25. The mix of free entry and a ticketed live highlight is a practical format for a city week: it opens the doors to walk-up visitors while still staging a paid set that carries weight on the bill.
Lynott’s place in Irish rock remains fixed through Thin Lizzy and the songs that carried his name beyond the band. He died in 1986; the catalogue and the stage legend did not. MusicTown’s choice to centre a full week on that body of work, rather than a single anniversary date, places the craft — the writing, the voice, the records and the image-makers who worked around him — at the heart of a Dublin programme. The documentary, the photography and the conversations with people who knew the work up close all point in that direction.
Fitzpatrick’s long association with Lynott’s visual world, Davies’s photography and Carr’s perspective as a fellow musician give the talks and the exhibition a line of continuity that a pure nostalgia night would lack. The National Concert Hall panel on the opening Monday sets a broader frame before the week moves into the exhibition rooms and the IFI screen.
Any further additions to the bill remain unconfirmed. The organisers have not confirmed extra dates or guests beyond the published line-up. Tickets and free-entry details sit with the individual venues as the week begins on Monday. For listeners who still play the records, the week is a chance to meet the film, the photographs and the people who shaped how Lynott is seen — in the city where the story always returns.
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