Dermot Kennedy

Grafton Street, Newbury Street and a ten-minute favour

Dermot Kennedy was born on 13 December 1991 in Rathcoole, County Dublin. He picked up a guitar at eleven after watching a cousin play, and by fifteen his father was walking him into open-mic nights around Dublin. He started writing songs at sixteen and, in the same years, busked on Grafton Street, joining the Christmas Eve busks that Glen Hansard runs in the city. He went on to Maynooth University, graduating with a Bachelor of Music in 2012, and played in a band called Shadows and Dust that carried on until 2015.

Boston was part of the apprenticeship too. In the summer of 2011 he went over on a J-1 visa and busked on Newbury Street with the most basic gear, playing Ben Howard covers outside venues such as the Paradise Rock Club. He has said the band years, from nineteen to twenty-three, taught him how to jam and how to hold a room with other players.

The first real break was a favour. In December 2014 Hansard invited him to play ten minutes at a Frames show at Vicar Street in front of 1,500 people. The second was an algorithm. In February 2016 Spotify put two self-released tracks, An Evening I Will Not Forget and After Rain, into Discover Weekly and his numbers moved overnight. Both songs still sit in the set a decade later.

Three number ones, and a split with the critics

Power Over Me, released in 2018, was the song that turned streams into a career, and by October 2018 he was telling a Boston radio station that nearly every date on his US tour had sold out. Without Fear arrived in 2019 and has since been described by RTÉ as one of Ireland's best-selling debut albums this century. Outnumbered in 2019, Giants in 2020 and a feature on Meduza's Paradise the same year kept him on radio, and the Brit Awards nominated him for international male solo artist in 2020.

Better Days, released on 28 July 2021, won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Irish Song of the Year. The second album, Sonder, was pushed back twice from a planned 23 September 2022 because of UK postal strikes and finally came out on 18 November 2022 through Riggins, Interscope and Island. It went to number one in the UK and Ireland and reached 74 on the Billboard 200. Kiss Me was the big single.

The reviews were less sure than the charts. AllMusic gave Sonder four stars, but The Arts Desk gave it two and called it crowd-pleasing, high-polish pop without much edge, and the Irish Times settled on three, praising solid emotional pop songs while complaining that the music had not moved on since his debut. An EP, I've Told the Trees Everything, followed in 2024 and pointed at a quieter direction.

The Weight of the Woods

The third album answered that criticism by stripping things back. The Weight of the Woods was released on 3 April 2026 on Island and Interscope, produced by Gabe Simon, whose credits include Noah Kahan and Lana Del Rey. Kennedy recorded most of it in a studio near his home in rural Ireland, and the forest behind the house gave the record its title and much of its imagery. He has called it a homegrown thing with Irish instruments and an Irish story, and the Maynooth University Chamber Choir, from his old college, sings on it.

It runs fourteen tracks over fifty minutes, opening with an a cappella reprise of the title song and closing with the full version. Funeral came first as a single on 21 January 2026, then Refuge on 20 February and Honest on 20 March. The album went in at number one in the UK, Ireland and Scotland, reached five in Germany and nine in Flanders, and made Kennedy the first Irish solo artist to top the UK chart with each of his first three studio albums.

In a podcast interview around the release he said that he had considered living elsewhere but did not think he would be happy anywhere else, and that he had never built the career around celebrity. That is consistent with the way the record was made: back home, near his parents, with a choir he knew from university.

Two nights at the Aviva

The 2026 campaign was announced in pieces. Time Out reported the UK arena run on 21 November 2025: Glasgow's OVO Hydro on 29 May, Manchester's AO Arena on 30 May, Cardiff on 1 June, Leeds on 2 June, Birmingham on 4 June and The O2 in London on 5 June, with tickets from £47.90 to £76.30 and general sale on 28 November. The Irish folk band Amble were named as support for Manchester, Cardiff and Leeds. Pollstar's report of 26 March 2026 framed the whole European and UK leg as 22 dates from 11 May to 12 July, with Copenhagen and Dublin already sold out.

Dublin meant the Aviva Stadium on 11 and 12 July, roughly 50,000 people each night. RTÉ noted on 11 July that this made him the first Irish solo artist to headline the ground on two consecutive nights, and put his streaming total above five billion; he had already headlined Madison Square Garden and Red Rocks. Speaking to RTÉ in late June he said that 50,000 people twice was something he felt very grateful for, and that he was trying to appreciate how much it had taken to get there without being intimidated by it.

Hot Press reported from the Aviva that the main stage was dressed with grass tufts and rocks to suggest the countryside, that a B-stage sat in the middle of the pitch, and that a live choir was on hand. The surprise was Noel and Mike Hogan of The Cranberries walking on for Zombie. From the stage Kennedy said he usually worked out how to describe a gig by the end, but did not think he would ever know how to describe this one.

On the side, he now runs a festival of his own called Misneach, which sold out dates in Sydney and Boston in April 2026.

What the show is like now

The O2 show on 5 June 2026 is a fair template for the arena version. Setlist.fm logs nineteen songs, opening with the a cappella Weight of the Woods reprise and running through Honest, Wasted, Outnumbered, Sycamore and Refuge before the older material lands in a block: Lost, An Evening I Will Not Forget, All My Friends and After Rain. Happiness, Let Me In, Endless, the full title track, Stockholm and Turnstile fill the middle, and the night finishes with Better Days, Power Over Me and Funeral. Jensen McRae opened in London.

Bev Lung's review for The Upcoming described a stage lit with a moody forest glow, trunk-like pillars and moss-draped steps, a seven-piece band and nine gospel singers, and the singer encouraging the songwriters in the crowd between numbers. The verdict was that he pulled off a performance equally intimate and expansive, filling a room the size of The O2 while making fans forget where they were. Fan reviews collected across recent tours talk about the same thing from the other side of the barrier: the voice sounding as raw in person as on record, and rooms going silent for the quiet songs.

The North American leg is the one currently on sale. Live Nation's 32-date run opened at The Armory in Minneapolis on 4 September 2026 and closes at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on 29 October, taking in Red Rocks, the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, Forest Hills Stadium in Queens and the RBC Amphitheatre in Toronto. Jonah Kagen supports across the run, with Hunter Metts added for Minneapolis and Milwaukee. For scale, Pollstar's box-office data had his 2025 Ryman Auditorium show in Nashville grossing $132,951 from 2,259 tickets; the 2026 rooms are several times that size.