Culture Night at the NLI
We are joining in the celebrations for Culture Night 2025 and will be open to visitors throughout the evening.
National Library of Ireland , Explore Main Building, 7-8 Kildare St., 5pm-9pm
In Kildare Street, our doors will be open from 5pm–9pm and everyone is welcome. From 5pm, you can wander into the hall to view the Lego model of the library or explore our William Butler Yeats exhibition. From 6pm- 9pm, take in the stunning surroundings of the Reading Room. Between 7pm and 8pm, St. Mary’s College Singers, led by Director Maria Stanley, will perform a selection of popular music in the Reading Room.
No booking is required to visit the Reading Room or listen to St. Mary's College Singers.
Director's Tour of the National Library, 7-8 Kildare St., 5pm-6pm (BOOKED OUT)
The Director, Dr Audrey Whitty opens Culture Night 2025 at the National Library of Ireland with the Director’s Tour. Discover the history of our beautiful Victorian building on Kildare Street and visit the famous Reading Room and explore our links with some of Ireland’s greatest writers and thinkers. It will also include access to the Art Room, normally open by appointment for readers to consult NLI’s visual collections.
Meet in the Front Hall of the National Library of Ireland, entry free but booking is required. Book here
YEATS: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats, 7-8 Kildare St., 5pm-9pm
Sit awhile and listen to some of the poet’s best-loved poems and stroll through the exhibition exploring the many interests of WB Yeats: Ireland, literature, folklore, theatre, politics, the occult – and his significant influence on modern Irish cultural identity.
Our Yeats exhibition will be open in the main building on Kildare Street from 5pm-9pm. No booking required.
For more information regarding accessibility in our buildings please see here.
Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again – Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre at College Green, 5pm-9pm
Enjoy a self-guided, ‘after-hours’ tour on Culture Night. Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again draws on the National Library’s extensive archive of Heaney documents to bring the visitor on a multi-sensory journey from the poet’s humble origins through his remarkable career.
No booking required.
Special Preview: Live Aid Exhibition - National Photographic Archive, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, 5pm-8.30pm
Live Aid, the “Global Jukebox”, held in London and Philadelphia, attended by over 150,000 audience members in total and broadcast live using cutting edge technology to unite almost 2 billion viewers across 150 countries, raised millions for famine relief in Africa.
For a generation of music fans, watching Live Aid in 1985 was an experience like no other. Share that experience with a special pre-launch Culture Night visit to our new exhibition of photographs, selected from the Band Aid Trust Archive, generously donated to the National Library by Bob Geldof in 2017.
No booking required.
Live Podcast Event with Podcaster in Residence, Zoë Comyns, Joly Theatre, 7pm-8pm
To mark the launch of her residency as the National Library Podcaster in Residence, Zoë Comyns hosts a pop-up collection inspired by treasures from the Library’s archives.
Come along to celebrate the power of words, storytelling and discovery through a live recording featuring short readings, talks and stories. The evening of voices, ideas and inspiration will draw from a rich selection of materials including books, newspapers, journals, prints and drawings, manuscripts and photographs from the National Library’s extraordinary collection, bringing the past to life.
Event hosted in Joly Theatre, 7-8 Kildare St. Booking Required. Book Here
National Library Culture Night Passport, Various Locations & Times
The NLI is pleased to announce a Culture Night passport, encouraging you to visit the NLI’s three unique cultural campuses. The NLI can stamp your Culture Night passport at the following locations and times on Friday 19 September.
- National Library of Ireland, 7/8 Kildare Street | 6-9pm
- Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again exhibition, Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre, Westmoreland Street | 5-9pm
- National Photographic Archive, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar | 5- 8.30pm
Please contact info@nli.ie with any queries.
Pop-Up Collection & Podcast
Join Zoë Comyns and guests for a special live event at the National Library of Ireland for Culture Night 2025.
Launching her 2025/26 NLI Podcaster in Residence, Zoë Comyns will host a pop-up collection inspired by treasures from the Library’s archives with contributions from staff and guests.
Come along to celebrate the power of words, storytelling and discovery through a live recording featuring short readings, talks and stories. The evening of voices, ideas and inspiration will draw from a rich selection of materials including books, newspapers, journals, prints and drawings, manuscripts and photographs from the National Library of Ireland’s extraordinary collection, bringing the past to life.
Zoë Comyns is a multi-award-winning radio producer whose work spans drama, essay, factual and documentary. She is the presenter and producer of the new writing series The Prompt on RTÉ Radio 1. She has presented and produced numerous programmes and series RTÉ Radio 1, Lyric FM, Newstalk, and the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. Her series Keywords was a short writing series on RTÉ Radio 1 and she produced The Book Show, The Book on One and Inside Culture - combining author interviews, themed readings, and fresh literary perspectives. Zoë has won numerous accolades including New York Festivals Awards, the Prix Marulić, Åke Blomström, IMRO, PPI and the John McGahern Award for Literature for emerging writers.
Guests on the night will include:
Brian Cleary is a writer, researcher, and pharmacist based in Marino, a short walk from Marino Crescent, where Bram Stoker was born. While doing research for historical fiction, Brian rediscovered Bram Stoker's lost short story Gibbet Hill in the Reading Room of The National Library of Ireland. His discovery of this haunting gothic tale came as a direct result of his experience of sudden hearing loss. He published Gibbet Hill with the Rotunda Foundation to benefit the Charlotte Stoker Fund. This fund supports research on potentially preventable hearing loss in vulnerable newborns.
Alice Lyons is a writer whose work embraces poetry and the visual arts. Her latest book, Oona (Lilliput Press 2020) was shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien award. Lyons is recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry and the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary awarded by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Lyons was Radcliffe Fellow in Poetry and New Media at Harvard University 2015/16, and in 2023 was the inaugural recipient of the Heaney-Miłosz Residency in Kraków, Poland. She lectures in writing and literature at ATU Sligo.
Ian Maleney is a writer, editor, and documentary producer living in Ireland. His first book, a collection of essays entitled Minor Monuments, was published in 2019 by Tramp Press. It was shortlisted for the Michel Deon Prize and the Butler Literary Award. His writing has been widely published, including in The Guardian, Esquire, and The New Statesman. He is the founder and editor of Fallow, a literary journal.
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is an Indian-Irish writer, performer, and cultural consultant. Her work has been published by Dedalus Press, Little Island, Banshee, Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland, and others. She was a Science Gallery Dublin Rapid Residency artist in 2021, was the Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics in 2023, and was a 2024 Goethe-Institut Studio Quantum Artist in Residence. She is currently under commission with Skein Press, and her debut poetry collection will be published with Dedalus Press in 2026.
Laura Ryan is a librarian and art historian who is an Assistant Keeper of Visual Collections at the NLI, looking after the library’s Prints, Drawings & Ephemera collections. Laura is an Irish-language speaker with a particular interest in the history of Irish language children’s publishing, and the visual culture of Ireland around the formation of the Irish Free State.
Nora Thornton began working in the NLI as a Library Assistant in 2009. She qualified as an archivist in 2018 and she is now an Assistant Keeper in the Special Collections Department working with the photographic collections in the NPA.(National Photographic Archive). Previously she worked as an archaeologist and as well as being very enthusiastic about the NLI’s photographic collections, her interests include archaeology, food history and crafts.
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This residency is gratefully supported by The Arts Council
See the full programme of events for Culture Night at the NLI here.
