Galway has handed its streets to cartoonists for six days, and the official schedule reads like a sketchbook that discovered a social calendar. The 10th Galway Cartoon Festival runs October 1–6 with exhibitions, live drawing, workshops, an island trip and an evening club devoted to the demanding professional discipline of drawing, celebrating and relaxing.
The anniversary theme is Having a Laugh. Ireland’s only festival devoted to cartoonists and satire has spread its 2026 program across Galway City and Inis Oírr, according to Galway Tourism’s event listing. Many events are free, giving visitors several days to test an important cultural theory: every city map improves when somebody adds a speech bubble.
Cleo Claws’ culture desk: Galway has arranged caffeine, pencils and plausible deniability in a remarkably efficient sequence. This is civic planning with whiskers.
Friday begins with coffee for “recovering artists”
At 10 a.m. on Friday, October 2, the festival invites “recovering artists” to Plámás for Coffee with Drawing and the launch of Tarraing É i nGaeilge, its Irish-language cartoon exhibition. The formula is elegant: meet other artists, acquire caffeine and see what the pencil decides to do.
The day keeps moving. A 1 p.m. retrospective at Galway City Museum looks back across the festival’s first decade. At 5 p.m., the Town Hall Theatre opens the main Having a Laugh exhibition. The organizers say the show contains 70 works selected from roughly 2,500 submissions by cartoonists around the world.
Friday evening brings Martin Rowson’s live performance at 7 p.m., followed by the Festival Club at the Mechanics’ Institute from 8:30 p.m. The club occupies an actual clubhouse dating to 1837, a fact that gives casual sketching the architectural gravitas it has always deserved.
Saturday turns a cartoonist into a treasure hunt
Saturday starts with coffee and drawing at 10 a.m. Then, at 11 a.m., the program expands to “All Around the Town” for Where’s Joey? Festivalgoers follow clues to locate cartoonist and storyboard artist Joey Mason, with a prize waiting for the successful search party.
The organizers describe Mason as elusive. Cleo’s working assessment is more precise: a professional artist has become a roaming public puzzle, and Galway has accepted the assignment.
The Saturday schedule adds another ambitious group project at the Small Crane Extravaganza. Street performer and cartoonist Glenn Marshall plans to recreate the Wooden Horse of Troy with help from visitors. Later talks, screenings and discussions range from political satire to women in cartooning before the Festival Club resumes its evening shift.
Sunday lets children correct a professional
On Sunday morning, a ferry carries the festival to Inis Oírr for drawing sessions and Irish-language events. The organizers even invite sketching aboard the boat when the waves cooperate.
The island program reaches a perfect comic reversal at 4 p.m. with Glenn Marshall Can’t Draw. Children will teach the established cartoonist how to draw “properly,” turning the usual workshop arrangement upside down for an all-ages session. The official timetable also includes a 3 p.m. lunch, explained with the concise reminder that artists sometimes forget to eat.
Monday supplies a second Where’s Joey? hunt on Inis Oírr. The island version comes with a geographical advantage: the organizers observe that their elusive artist can only have wandered so far.
A festival built for participation
The funniest thread in Galway’s anniversary week is also its warmest. Visitors can paste drawings onto a Freedom Wall, join open sketching sessions, search for an artist, help assemble a wooden horse and let children run the drawing lesson. The event treats cartooning as a public activity that belongs in cafés, bookshops, streets, pubs, theaters and ferries.
That makes the 10th anniversary feel bigger than a retrospective. Galway is celebrating the people who make cartoons and inviting everyone else to pick up a pencil, follow an arrow and see where the joke leads.
Sources: Galway Cartoon Festival official 2026 program; Galway Tourism event listing.
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