Tickets set for the Saw Doctors' Cork anniversary night

They are the first act locked for Virgin Media Park's 2027 summer run, with The Stunning as special guests; the show is on 3 July as the band mark their 40th anniversary.

Tickets for The Saw Doctors' outdoor headline show at Virgin Media Park in Cork go on general sale at 10am on 2 October through Ticketmaster.ie, priced at €59.90 including booking fee. A Mastercard presale opens on 30 September. The Galway band are the first act confirmed for the venue's summer 2027 programme.

The concert itself falls on 3 July 2027, with special guests The Stunning. That date was already one of the fixed points set down for a 40th-anniversary year still taking shape. What arrives now are the practical details: the price, the sale windows and the confirmation that this is the opening name on Cork's Musgrave Park summer run.

A Tuam line that still draws a crowd

Formed in Tuam, County Galway, in 1986, The Saw Doctors built a career on songs that travelled far beyond the west of Ireland while never leaving it behind. They have notched eighteen Top 30 singles in the Republic, three of them number ones. Their first chart-topper, "I Useta Lover", held the Irish number-one spot for nine consecutive weeks in 1990 and still stands as the country's all-time biggest-selling single. On 15 February 2008, they received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Ireland Music Awards.

The early albums mapped that ascent: If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back in 1991, All the Way from Tuam in 1992, then Same Oul' Town in 1996, Sing a Powerful Song in 1997 and Songs from Sun Street in 1998. The recent run has been busy on the singles front — I Love To Go Awanderin', Man In The Moon, Quicksand and Sound Sham all arrived in 2024, alongside the EP WHA'D'YA THINK A THAT? — with 2025 bringing a Same Oul' Town version with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the single Tuam Beat.

The current eight-piece line-up keeps core members Davy Carton and Leo Moran at the centre, joined by Rickie O'Neill, Kieran Duddy, Tommy Carton, Anthony Thistlethwaite, Noelie McDonnell and returning founder Pearse Doherty. That is the band that will take the Virgin Media Park stage next July.

The Stunning on the bill

Special guests The Stunning, the Galway group built around brothers Steve and Joe Wall, lock the night into a shared west-of-Ireland lineage the two acts have long occupied. The pairing follows The Saw Doctors' own sold-out appearances at the same Cork venue in 2025 and their set at Electric Picnic, proof that the outdoor circuit still answers when the Tuam band call.

Further acts for the Virgin Media Park summer 2027 programme remain unannounced. For now the calendar holds this one confirmed headline date, the ticket windows about to open, and a 40th anniversary that continues to fill in around it.