In the days and weeks before the Dublin Irish Festival, its organizers perform a logistical Irish dance to get the massive event ready for tens of thousands of visitors.
First, the tents go up. Then the tables. Then volunteers come back around and put on tablecloths. For one of the festival's stages with a dance floor, the order is tent then stage then dance floor then lights, Allison LeRoy, director of events with the city of Dublin, told The Dispatch.
"Everything is kind of those puzzle pieces putting together to make sure that everything gets in in the right the way so that then someone's not delayed or waiting for somebody else," LeRoy said.
The festival organizers also have to manage parking, traffic, airport shuttles, hotel rooms, over 100
vendors, thousands of gallons of beer, grounds maintenance, around 1,000 volunteers and little details like maps and signs. The one factor completely out of the city's control, and the hardest part about preparing for the festival, is the weather.
"We ... say ... don't look at the weather, but on the other hand you want to look at the weather," LeRoy said.
The weather for this year's Dublin Irish Festival, which runs from July 31 to Aug. 2 in Coffman Park, is mostly rainy. The first day of the festival will be mostly sunny, but there's a 60% chance of rain Saturday and a 40% chance Sunday, according to the National Weather Service in Wilmington.
Organizers are expecting around 85,000 visitors to come to the festival this year, which is around the same number of people that attended the past few years. Festival attendance peaked at just over 100,000 visitors in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it hasn't quite bounced back yet.
"We kind of don't know if we're ever going to get back. You know, there's a certain number of people now since COVID who just won't go in crowds and won't do things. I don't know if they're ever going to come back, maybe someday," LeRoy said.
The layout for this year's festival is largely unchanged from 2025. The stage, food courts and – most importantly for some visitors – bars are all in the same locations. Last year, festival attendees drank 11,000 gallons of beer, including 3,500 gallons of Guinness, according to LeRoy.
Along with the crowds and the festival itself, organizers also have to manage around 1,000 city volunteers. These volunteers are spread out in around 55 areas of the festival grounds, doing jobs like selling tickets, driving golf carts and delivering drinks to vendors, Christine Nardecchia, director of outreach and engagement with the city of Dublin said.
These volunteers have many reasons for working the festival, but the No. 1 reason the city hears is that volunteering is a tradition. There are a few people who have volunteered all 39 years of the festival's existence, and others who passed the volunteer tradition down through multiple generations of their families, Nardecchia said.
"It's a way to welcome the world to Dublin and this community is really proud of that. And then the other reason is it's a culture. People are really proud of that Irish culture and what the Irish have done and overcome and contributed. And so, the Irish identity and spirit is just palpable here this weekend, and they come back year after year and it's almost like a reunion," she said.
Once the weekend's festivities are over, Dublin spends around two weeks cleaning up Coffman Park. Most of the cleanup happens in the first two days after the festival, when workers remove stages and equipment and the festival's vendors take off. The festival items that Dublin doesn't rent end up in barns and the city's service center for the rest of the year, LeRoy said.
Before clean up can start, this year's Dublin Irish Festival will run from 4 p.m. to midnight July 31, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Aug. 1 and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Aug. 2.
Transportation and neighborhoods reporter Nathan Hart can be reached at NHart@dispatch.com, @NathanRHart on X and nathanhart.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: A look behind the scenes of the Dublin Irish Festival
