21/09/2026
Full Statement:
Lumen Street Theatre regrets to confirm that it will not present the Samhain: Limerick’s Hallowe’en Festival Parade in 2026, nor will it deliver Limerick City and County Council’s proposed Mischief Night Hallowe’en Parade.
For the past nine years, Lumen and its artists, performers, volunteers and community partners have built Samhain into one of Limerick’s most distinctive seasonal cultural events. Since 2023, its parade, involving approximately 150 performers, has attracted audiences of more than 20,000 people annually to the streets of Limerick.
This is therefore not a decision Lumen has taken lightly.
In May 2026, Lumen informed Limerick City and County Council (LCCC) that it could not deliver a parade of Samhain’s scale and quality without adequate financial and operational support. Earlier in the year, Lumen had approached the Council’s Festivals and Events Office seeking support for the 2026 Samhain festival and parade but was informed that funding would not be provided for the parade.
Lumen was subsequently invited to tender for a separate Council-led “Mischief Night” parade for 31 October. Lumen was successful in tendering for a €50,000 parade strand. The available budget was subsequently reduced to €40,000, with approximately half of that amount required to meet event-management costs. Lumen concluded that the remaining resources were insufficient to create and deliver a large-scale parade to the professional and artistic standard expected by audiences, participating artists and the company itself. Lumen was subsequently advised that the €40,000 allocation would no longer be available for the parade.
Separately, Lumen was informed that €3,600 had been allocated towards Samhain: Limerick’s Hallowe’en Festival, encompassing its five-day programme and parade. Lumen had secured a further €25,000 from the Arts Council of Ireland towards the festival. However, the combined resources available were not sufficient to make the Samhain Parade viable in 2026.
The level of funding required for large-scale outdoor spectacle can be seen in previous Council investment in similar programming. In 2024, LCCC allocated €69,000 to bring Planète Vapeur’s Pegasus production to Limerick as part of Riverfest, comprising of the winged-horse spectacle and 11 performers. By comparison, Samhain has involved approximately 150 performers alongside the substantial artistic, production, event-management and community infrastructure required to stage the parade.
Lumen has also raised concerns over a number of years regarding the governance and development of Hallowe’en programming in Limerick, including funding decisions, route planning, marketing and the use of material developed through Samhain. In particular, Lumen has concerns regarding the use of Samhain festival content and previous programme material by LCCC in connection with applications for external funding, including Fáilte Ireland support.
These concerns have become particularly significant following the award of funding to LCCC under Fáilte Ireland’s Home of Halloween initiative. Lumen understands that this provides €100,000 per year for five years towards the development of Hallowe’en activity in Limerick. Despite Samhain’s established role in developing Limerick’s Hallowe’en cultural offering, the Samhain Parade received no additional support through this initiative in either 2025 or 2026.
Lumen believes there is now a need for greater clarity around the relationship between independently developed cultural events, public funding and Council-led festival programming. We would welcome constructive engagement on how the creative work, intellectual contribution and long-term investment of independent cultural organisations are recognised when successful local initiatives become part of wider publicly funded programmes.
The immediate consequence, however, is deeply disappointing: the Samhain Parade scheduled for 25 October will not take place on Limerick’s streets this autumn.
Samhain has been built over nine years through the imagination and work of artists, the creation of bespoke artworks, community participation, volunteer commitment and extraordinary public support. That commitment continued even through the Covid-19 pandemic. The scale of the audiences that have gathered for the parade in recent years demonstrates the place it has come to occupy in Limerick’s cultural life.
We remain immensely proud of what Samhain has contributed to the city and grateful to the artists, performers, volunteers, community partners and thousands of audience members who have supported it.
We also wish to acknowledge Mayor John Moran and Cllr Maria Donoghue for their continued support for Lumen and Samhain.
Lumen remains committed to ambitious, artist-led and community-rooted cultural work in Limerick, and to the belief that cultural events of this scale require sustainable investment, transparent processes and respect for the creative organisations and communities that build them
