Please note that programme and speakers may change due to circumstances outside our control.
Best Value Tickets
Design Kenmare 2026 Weekend Ticket
Save up to 50% over the weekend
Design Kenmare Weekend pass gives you access to all of the leading voices we have gathered from the global design community alongside Ireland’s most accomplished practitioners. Across 18 keynote panels and discussions, speakers will explore themes such as: • The harmony of form and function in contemporary design • Storytelling and narrative in visual practice • Sustainable design and the circular economy • Cultural heritage and what makes design timeless • Collaboration, retail experience, and the evolving marketplace The tone throughout the weekend will be insightful, conversational, and cross-disciplinary — encouraging genuine dialogue between creators, thinkers, and audiences. Each session will conclude with Q&A opportunities and informal discussion, reflecting the festival’s ethos of openness and exchange.
Design Kenmare 2026 Saturday Ticket
Saving of €80 over the day
Design Kenmare Saturday pass gives you access to all events on the Saturday. There will be some of the most important and recognisable creatives working in Ireland and abroad in Kenmare to discuss their passions in an intimate setting. Across 9 keynote panels and discussions, speakers will explore themes such as: • Storytelling and narrative in visual practice • The harmony of form and function in contemporary design • Collaboration, retail experience, and the evolving marketplace The tone throughout the day will be insightful, conversational, and cross-disciplinary — encouraging genuine dialogue between creators, thinkers, and audiences. Each session will conclude with Q&A opportunities and informal discussion, reflecting the festival’s ethos of openness and exchange.
4:00PM The Rural Renaissance
Speakers: Stephen O'Connell, Paul O'Brien & Sasha Sykes. Hosted by Róisín Buckley
A potter working at the Atlantic edge of Kerry, a furniture maker, an artist who casts hedgerows and seaweed into acrylic and a guest from Europe's creative-economy federation, all of whom work a long way from a capital city. How does a rural existence and being part of an intimate community inform and inspire the creative process. How can creative hubs outside the main urban centres provide sustainable careers for emerging designers and makers. And what is missed by not being in the Big Smoke?
Friday
5:30PM When the Client is Wrong
Speakers: Niall Rowan, Colin Farmer & Javvy M Royle. Hosted by Naoise Nunn
True stories from the Difficult End of the Job Every designer has one. The job that went sideways, the brief that changed on a Tuesday, the client who knew exactly what they wanted until they saw it. An architect, an interiors brand founder and a graphic designer swap the stories and try to work out whether the client was actually wrong, or whether that is just what we tell ourselves afterwards. Names may be changed.
7:00PM Your Design Career
Speakers: Neville Brody & Ken Deegan. Hosted by Mary Doherty
What They Don't Teach in Art College Neville Brody redesigned the look of the 1980s from the pages of The Face, went on to work with Nike, Coca-Cola and The Times and spent years as Dean of the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art. Ken Deegan spent over 12 years in New York as an Associate Partner at Pentagram before setting up his own studio, Associate, crafting identities across tech, culture and civic design. Between them they have hired, taught and mentored a generation of designers, and been on the receiving end of all three. Mary Doherty of Red Dog asks the question every graduate wants answered: what did nobody tell you?
8:00PM Design in the Sporting Arena
Speakers: Paul Galvin, Gavin Little, Kelly Anna & Conor Stakelum. Hosted by Jerry O'Sullivan
Sport, Style and the Design of Belonging The Sport of Design explores how design drives athletic culture; from team kits and stadium visual identities to the atmosphere of matchday. It examines how sound, visual branding and apparel combine to build a deep sense of community, energy and belonging for fans and athletes alike. The panel takes sports culture apart piece by piece to reveal how these multi-sensory details transform a simple game into a high-stakes emotional experience.
Saturday
9:30AM Shop Talk: From Studio to Shelf
Speakers: Frances Duff, Sonia Reynolds, Stephen O'Connell & Domhnall Ó Gairbhí. Hosted by Jenny Huston
What Sells, and Why? Making the thing is only half the job. Frances Duff and Sonia Reynolds built Stable of Ireland into one of the country's best-loved shops for Irish-made design; Stephen O'Connell sells Fermoyle Pottery from a studio at the edge of the Atlantic; Domhnall Ó Gairbhí trades in mid-century furniture at Acquired.ie. Jewellery designer Jenny Huston, who sells her own work every day, asks what actually moves off a shelf, what doesn't, and how you price the difference.
11:00AM The Feel of a Room
Speakers: Willie Duggan, Róisín Lafferty, Gavin Little & Frieda Gormley Hosted by Kate Butler
Designing Spaces for all the Senses You know within seconds whether a room is right. You rarely know why. Interior designer Róisín Lafferty, lighting designer Willie Duggan, sound designer Gavin Little and Frieda Gormley of House of Hackney take a room apart, sense by sense: what the light is doing, what the walls are doing, what you can hear without noticing and how it all adds up to a feeling.
11:30AM Honest Materials
Speakers: Donnacha Cahill, Jenny Huston & Sasha Sykes. Hosted by Gemma Tipton
Intentions and Consequences Every material makes a promise and most of them get broken somewhere down the line. Sculptor Donnacha Cahill works in steel at a scale you can walk around; Jenny Huston works with precious metals to enhance the beauty of the human form. Sasha Sykes casts hedgerow, seaweed and straw into acrylic furniture that will outlast the plants by centuries. With writer Gemma Tipton, they talk about what a material wants to be, what the maker wants from it, and who pays for the gap between the two.
12:30AM Not Blinded by the Light
Speakers: Amanda Bone, Willie Duggan & Boo George. Hosted by Róisín Buckley
Light as Material Nobody buys light and nothing works without it. Willie Duggan lights buildings for a living; Boo George has spent a career chasing it with a camera for the world's fashion magazines; architect Amanda Bone designs the openings it comes through. Three people who think about the same thing all day and have never compared notes. Expect a disagreement about north-facing windows.
3:30PM Global Creativity - What Design Is For
Speakers: Amer Shomali & Gerin Trautenberger on creative leadership, from Ramallah to Brussels. Hosted by Jerry O'Sullivan
Amer Shomali is an architect by training, an animator and artist by practice, co-director of the award-winning animated documentary The Wanted 18, and, since 2023, Director General of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. Gerin Trautenberger leads Creative FED, the federation that speaks for Europe's creative industries in Brussels. One runs a cultural institution in circumstances the rest of us only read about; the other spends his days persuading governments that creativity is infrastructure. In a town in Kerry, during Ireland's EU Presidency, they ask what creative leadership is actually for. Amer travels to Kenmare with the support of Kerten Hospitality.
5:00PM Luxury Design in the 21st Century
Speakers: Bryan O'Sullivan, Róisín Lafferty & Jim Dixon. Hosted by Louise Duffy
Superyachts, Grand hotels and the Question of Taste Bryan O'Sullivan designs bars and suites for some of London's grandest hotels. Róisín Lafferty designs the homes people photograph. Jim Dixon designs superyachts, where the budget is whatever the owner says it is. Broadcaster Louise Duffy asks the awkward question: when money is genuinely no object, what does good taste look like, and is quiet luxury just loud luxury with better PR?
5:30PM In a Different Light
Speakers: Matthew Thompson, Trevor Hart & Boo George. Hosted by Kate Butler
The Face and the Place Boo George photographs people, for the world's fashion magazines. Matthew Thompson photographs places: the buildings and interiors of Ireland's best architects, quietly and without fuss. Trevor Hart makes pictures for advertising, where every inch of the frame is a decision. Three photographers, three ways of seeing, one darkened room in the Carnegie with the pictures up big.
6:30PM Design Her
Speakers: Holly Pereira, Kelly Anna & Noelle Cooper. Hosted by Kate Butler
Work and the rooms they walked into. Holly Pereira paints walls the size of buildings. Kelly Anna draws bodies in motion for the biggest names in sport. Noelle Cooper co-founded Unthink, one of Dublin's most quietly influential design studios. Three image-makers at the top of their game on how they got there, what they make, and what it took.
8:00PM Making Your Living from Design
Speakers: Darrell Kavanagh, Javvy M Royle & Tim Dunleavy. Hosted by Róisín Buckley
The Price and Value of Creative Work The last session of Saturday night, and the most honest. Darrell Kavanagh runs Image Now, one of Ireland's best-known design agencies. Tim Dunleavy makes furniture by hand in Kildare and has to charge for every hour of it. Javvy M Royle turned a wallpaper obsession into House of Hackney. What does a designer's time actually cost, why do so many of us get the pricing wrong, and what would you tell your younger self about the invoice?
Sunday
10:00AM Designing for Humans
Speakers: Paul Galvin, Jenny Huston & Anna Guerin. Hosted by Gemma Tipton
Fashion, Jewellery and Designing for the Human Form Most designers get to work on a flat surface or a still room. These three design for a body that moves, sweats, ages and has opinions. Anna Guerin makes clothes at The Landskein, Paul Galvin went from the Kerry half-back line to his own label, and Jenny Huston makes jewellery that gets worn every day. Gemma Tipton asks what it means to design for the human form, and who decides what that form is supposed to look like.
11:30AM Design for Life
Speakers: Frieda Gormley, Anna Guerin, Tim Dunleavy & Paul O'Brien. Hosted by Naoise Nunn
Built to be Inherited Your grandmother's chair is still in the kitchen. The one you bought online is in a skip. Frieda Gormley built House of Hackney on the idea that beauty is the most sustainable thing you can make; Tim Dunleavy and Paul O'Brien make furniture meant to be handed down; Anna Guerin makes clothes you keep. A conversation about longevity, repair, and whether anyone is still willing to wait for something well made.
1:00PM Architects of Identity
Speakers: Noelle Cooper, Mary Doherty, Ken Deegan & Matthew Thompson. Hosted by Darrell Kavanagh
Building Trust in Brand A brand is a promise made in public. Noelle Cooper of Unthink, Mary Doherty of Red Dog and Ken Deegan, formerly of Pentagram and now co-founder of Associate, have built identities for organisations that had to be believed; photographer Matthew Thompson makes the pictures those identities live in. Darrell Kavanagh of Image Now, who has been at this longer than most, asks how trust gets designed, how quickly it gets lost, and what a logo can and cannot carry.
2:30PM This Must be the Place
Speakers: Niall Rowan, Joanne Byrne, Cel Phelan & Amer Shomal. Hosted by Jerry O'Sullivan
Placemaking and the Design of a Heritage Town This talk explores how physical spaces tell compelling stories, looking at environmental design, museum curation and public placemaking to examine how exhibits, heritage sites and civic spaces sit within their community. Panellists will look at how 3D spatial design, lighting, sound and physical artifacts combine to move visitors beyond passive observation into feeling like active participants. They will be able to discuss how cultural quarters and public installations preserve local heritage, shape collective identity and transform static locations into vibrant community spaces.
4:00PM Designing the Guest Journey: From First Click to Treasured Memory
Speakers: Giacomo Nicolodi, Jim Dixon, Bryan O'Sullivan & Colin Farmer. Hosted by Gemma Tipton
A stay begins long before you arrive and goes on long after you leave. Giacomo Nicolodi shapes the look and feel of Kerten Hospitality's hotels across Europe and the Middle East; Bryan O'Sullivan designs the rooms guests photograph; Jim Dixon designs the yachts; Colin Farmer of Unthink designs the first thing you ever see, the screen. Closing the festival, a conversation about the whole arc of hospitality, from the booking page to the story you tell people years later. Presented with Kerten Hospitality, Design Kenmare's principal patron.