Aaron McCann

Omagh, 2012, and the Belfast rooms

Aaron McCann comes from Omagh and started in stand-up in 2012, working the Northern Irish club circuit — Laverys Comedy Club in Belfast and The Empire among the regular rooms. That is the unglamorous part of the story and it lasted a long time: his own venue listings describe him as having been a prominent member of the Northern Irish comedy scene for over a decade before anything changed.

The circuit work built to a sold-out hour at Belfast's Mandela Hall, the university venue that for years functioned as the step up from club night to theatre show for Northern Irish acts. He also spent a year gigging on the Los Angeles circuit, performing in front of established American headliners including Tom Segura and Tony Hinchcliffe, before the New York move proper.

The hours, and a Fringe habit

McCann's Edinburgh record runs back to 2016, when he shared a show called Fat Head and the Big Dog with Dave Elliott. A solo hour, Happy Enough?, followed in 2019. In 2022 he brought two things to the festival: his own hour Goodnight Irene, and General Banter Live: Colin Geddis & Friends, the first visible sign of a working partnership that would shortly become the main event. In 2024 he was back with Bomb Squad Pod Live!, a live recording of the podcast rather than a stand-up show.

That progression — two-hander, solo hour, group show, podcast — maps fairly precisely onto how his career has actually earned its money. The solo hours established him as a writer of material; the podcast is what filled the rooms.

Entertainment visa, summer 2023

In the summer of 2023 McCann relocated to the United States on an entertainment visa. The Ulster Hall listing for his current tour puts it bluntly: after more than a decade on the Northern Irish scene he decided to hit the factory reset on his life and move to New York City.

What that looks like in practice is volume. He performs regularly at clubs across the east coast and has worked rooms including The Comedy Store in Los Angeles and the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan, often doing several sets in a single evening because New York has enough shows a night to make that possible. He has also taken support slots for Shane Gillis, Daniel Sloss, Shapel Lacey and Grace O'Malley.

The move is the subject of the touring show, not just the backdrop to it. Momentum is explicitly about the relocation and about what McCann is meant to do with a career that is finally moving — the tour copy has him feeling he has momentum without knowing whether it is pointing in the right direction.

The Bomb Squad Pod and the arena problem

In 2023 McCann teamed up with the Belfast comedian Colin Geddis to start The Bomb Squad Pod. Within two years it had outgrown theatres: in February 2025 the pair announced a show at the SSE Arena in Belfast for that May, the largest indoor venue in Northern Ireland. The venue listings for his 2026 theatre tour state the podcast has sold out the SSE Arena more than once.

McCann's own description of the arena format at the time was unfussy — a live podcast with stand-up folded in, plus guests and games. "The show is going to be great fun and a good laugh," he said of the May 2025 date. "The place is huge... we will also be doing a bit of stand-up, and we will have a few guests and some games as well."

This creates an unusual shape for a comedian at his stage. The podcast audience can fill an arena; the stand-up show is still playing mid-size theatres and a 400-seat London studio. Momentum is, among other things, the test of how much of that podcast crowd will come out for an hour of written material with no games in it.

Where things stand: November 2026

Momentum was announced in summer 2026, with a members' presale on 2 July and general sale from 10am on 3 July through nicomedy.com. The run opened in Derry on 5 November 2026, reached the Leicester Square Theatre in London on 10 November, then plays Dublin on 19 November and the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on 20 November — the same Belfast auditorium he has headlined before.

The year does not end with the tour. On 23 September 2026 it was announced that McCann and Geddis would host Comedians' Comedy at The O2 Belfast on 27 December 2026, billed as Northern Ireland comedy's biggest night of the year. The announced line-up alongside the two hosts includes Ruairi Woods, Paddy Raff, Mark McCarney, Micky Bartlett, Dave Elliott, Aaron Butler and Lianne McCoey, with more acts to be confirmed. It is a pattern worth noting: McCann's largest-capacity work is consistently as a host or co-host of something collective, while the solo hour stays in theatres.

The show as it is being played

Momentum runs one hour forty-five minutes including an interval, and is restricted to over-16s. The length is the giveaway — this is not a tight club hour but a two-half theatre show, which is how most Irish touring comedians structure a home-territory run. The London date was programmed as a 9.30pm start at £22; the Belfast Waterfront date starts at 7pm at £27.50 plus a £3.25 booking fee.

No support act is named on any of the current listings, and no press review of Momentum had appeared by 5 November 2026, the day the tour opened in Derry. What is documented is the material's subject — the New York move and its aftermath — and a touring history in which McCann has repeatedly sold out the rooms he returns to.