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The profile · researched 27 October 2026
Chapter 7 and the limits of a Waterford hillside: All Together Now at 35,000
All Together Now is the four-day festival John Reynolds planted at Curraghmore Estate in 2018 and never lived to see grow. Its 2026 edition drew 35,000 people and some of its sharpest criticism yet; the eighth chapter is already sold out for 29 July to 1 August 2027.
Built by a promoter who never saw it grow
All Together Now opened at Curraghmore Estate near Portlaw, Co Waterford, in August 2018: a four-day event over the Irish August bank holiday weekend, pitched as a boutique festival mixing music with art and food rather than a straight concert bill. It was put together by John Reynolds through his company Pod Concerts, and the debut drew Róisín Murphy, Fleet Foxes and Underworld to a site almost nobody in Irish festival-going had previously set foot on.
Reynolds was the figure who had already reshaped the Irish scene twice over — the POD nightclub on Harcourt Street from 1993, then Electric Picnic in 2004, which established the template a boutique Irish festival was expected to follow. He died suddenly in October 2018, a matter of months after the first All Together Now, and the festival has been run since by Pod Concerts alongside Aiken Promotions.
The estate is central to how the festival behaves. Curraghmore is a working country estate of rolling parkland served by narrow rural roads, which gives the site its look and also sets a hard ceiling on how many vehicles can reach it in an afternoon. Both of the festival's recurring problems — arrival traffic and a walk between stages that punishes anyone with limited mobility — come directly from the ground it stands on.
The 2019 queue, then two years of nothing
The second edition in 2019 went badly on logistics. Attendees faced multi-hour queues getting in and out, with limited access routes, thin stewarding and poor communication from organisers at the point when it mattered; there were further complaints about campsite conditions and sanitation. It remains the reference point against which every later arrival operation gets judged.
The 2020 and 2021 festivals did not happen because of the pandemic. The return in 2022 was the edition that set the current scale — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Underworld and Sinéad O'Connor across eighteen stages — and established that the festival would be programmed in breadth rather than around two or three names.
The traffic plan was rebuilt in the meantime, and it is now unusually prescriptive: designated access routes by region of origin, explicit instructions to ignore sat nav and Google Maps, and a standing warning not to approach via Carrick-on-Suir. The Irish Examiner's verdict in 2026 was that the plan held — there were delays, but no repeat of the 2019 gridlock.
A bill that stopped being only a bill
From 2023 the non-music half of the programme became a stated part of the product rather than a garnish. An RTÉ partnership that year brought a Now by RTÉ stage carrying spoken-word panels and documentary broadcasts. The 2024 edition, headlined by The Prodigy, The National, Jorja Smith and James Vincent McMorrow, drew roughly 35,000. The 2025 festival sold out in March, months before a full bill was public.
By 2026 — branded Chapter 7 — the festival was advertising more than 300 international and Irish acts across eighteen stages, with close to half the lineup Irish. Pulp, Kneecap, Underworld and Disclosure took the headline slots, with Christy Moore, The Mary Wallopers, Ezra Collective, Self Esteem, Mogwai, Floating Points, Kae Tempest, The Avalanches, Gilla Band, Kate Nash, Sprints and Dry Cleaning filling out the upper half.
Around that sit talks, comedy, theatre, literature and wellness programming: breathwork and sound baths at the Lawns of Tranquillity, saunas and hot tubs, craft workshops, sensory play areas, football and music bingo. New for 2026 were The Síbín's with Hometree, running conversations with ecologists, farmers, artists and musicians, and the Big Romance Dome.
Chapter 7: 31 July to 2 August 2026
Gates opened for early entry at 12.30pm on Thursday 30 July, with music across the following three days. Pulp headlined Friday from 10.45pm to 12.15am, placing Disco 2000 and Common People late and finishing on A Sunset, a slower song from 2025's More. Earlier highlights included Trinity Orchestra's orchestral readings of Hozier, Sinéad O'Connor, Thin Lizzy, The Cranberries and Enya, and SexyTadgh — Tadgh Griffin from Carlow — playing funk and trad with a harpist, piper and guitarist behind him.
Saturday belonged to Kneecap, who held the Main Stage for ninety minutes from 11.30pm. Kae Tempest and BIIRD joined them for a song dedicated to the late mother of Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey came on stage to speak about Palestine. Earlier the same day Greta Thunberg turned up unannounced at the Temporary Bandstand to talk about climate and global crises.
Christy Moore, at 81, filled the Something Kind of Wonderful marquee to capacity with a markedly young crowd, kept the between-song talk short, and led a singalong tribute to Glen Hansard, whose death shortly before the festival ran as a thread through the weekend — David Keenan marked it too. The overflow outside the tent struggled to hear him. Ezra Collective, promoted to the Main Stage after winning the Mercury Prize in the years since their 2023 appearance, kept their audience dancing from start to finish. David O'Doherty worked a comedy set off a small keyboard. Disclosure closed the festival with a DJ set from midnight to 1.30am on the Sunday.
What the reviews actually flagged
The capacity rise from 30,000 to 35,000 showed. Portaloos were overwhelmed, tents were overcrowded, and a compressed schedule forced hard clashes; one reviewer concluded the festival was beginning to brush up against its limits, and criticised non-music programming for occupying venue space. The weather compounded it: drought conditions meant wildfire smoke drifting off the Comeragh Mountains and dust clouds thick enough to cough through between sets.
Food pricing drew the loudest complaints — €11 curry chips, €12 cheese toasties at a fully cashless site. Programming took criticism too: only two of the top fourteen billed acts featured women, and booking Disclosure for midnight on Sunday sat awkwardly with a Monday morning departure. The hillside camping was cold at night and the walk between stages hard going for anyone with mobility limits.
What reviewers rated: the deposit return scheme, which traded bottles and cans for coffees, meals, massages and sauna slots and had the main arena clear by 10am on the Monday; the carpeted Big Romance Dome as a genuinely unusual festival room; and a run of Irish sets — For Those I Love's After Dark remix show, called the weekend's emotional peak, plus Lullahush, RÓIS, Trá Pháidín and Soda Blonde.
Standing now: sold out for 2027
The eighth chapter was confirmed days after the 2026 festival closed: 29 July to 1 August 2027, Curraghmore again. Loyalty registration for past attendees closed in late August 2026, and phase one went on sale at 9am on Thursday 27 August to code-holders only, priced by attendance history — €229.50 plus fees for anyone who had bought tickets to five or more previous editions, €249.50 for three or four, €279.50 for one or two, capped at two tickets per code. That is a rise of roughly €30 to €35 on the equivalent 2026 tiers.
Registrants were also offered a five-month instalment option of about €66 a month, and priority on general, family and campervan passes. The standard phase two general weekend camping ticket was listed at €319.50 plus fees. The festival's own ticket page now shows the 2027 event as sold out with a waitlist, repeating the pattern of 2025 and 2026 — and organisers have issued repeated warnings about resale scams, saying they have had a significant number of messages from people already caught.
The organisers' line on announcing the dates was about the audience rather than the bill: "None of this happens without you. All Together Now has always been about discovery — of music, of people, of moments you didn't see coming." On the evidence of 2026, the discovery part is intact; the open question is whether a hillside estate with narrow approach roads can carry 35,000 people without the compromises that reviewers spent the weekend writing down.
The show, now
All Together Now runs four days, with early entry from 12.30pm on the Thursday and music across Friday to Sunday; the arena operates roughly 9am to 10pm daily, with the late programme running past 1am. There is no support-act structure — the bill is around 300 acts over eighteen stages, among them the Main Stage, the Something Kind of Wonderful marquee, Road to Nowhere, the Temporary Bandstand, Last City, Hidden Sounds and the carpeted Big Romance Dome, which reviewers in 2026 singled out as the best-made room on site. Headline sets are long and late: Pulp played 10.45pm to 12.15am on the Friday of 2026, Kneecap took ninety minutes from 11.30pm on the Saturday, and Disclosure closed with a DJ set from midnight to 1.30am. Staging is conventional festival rig rather than spectacle; the draw is breadth and the parkland, with comedy, talks, theatre, literature, saunas, hot tubs, breathwork and children's programming folded into the same ticket. The site is cashless, campers may bring 24 cans, one litre of spirits or 1.5 litres of wine, and reaching it requires following the festival's designated route rather than sat nav. Recent reviews were broadly positive on the music and blunt about the rest: the hillside walk is punishing, camping sits on exposed high ground and gets cold, toilets and the busier tents were overwhelmed at 35,000, food was expensive at €11 for curry chips, and 2026's drought added wildfire smoke and dust to the weekend. Arrival still bites — some latecomers in 2026 reported three hours to cover the fifteen miles from Waterford city — but there has been no repeat of the 2019 gridlock.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · irishtimes.com · irishtimes.com · irishexaminer.com · irishexaminer.com · irishexaminer.com · irishexaminer.com · alltogethernow.ie