Five 2025 dates to plan a trip home around.
Ah, January. We meet again.
If you’re anything like us, you’re busy setting goals, counting down ‘til pay-day, eating more vegetables than ever, and planning for the year ahead.
For our lovely Northern Irish diaspora, planning for the year ahead might involve booking flights home to see all your favourite peeps.
Not sure which month to come home?
Then today is your lucky day, ‘cause we’ve picked out some of the coolest events happening here in 2025, to help make your decision that little bit easier.
Let’s get right into it…
Country 2 Country – March
If you’re a country music fan, you’re going to want to fly home around the 14th – 16th March, for Europe’s biggest country music festival, ‘Country 2 Country.’
Big names such as Lainey Wilson, Dierks Bentley and Cody Johnson will be stomping their cowboy boots all the way to the SSE Arena for an unforgettable weekend of music.
Heading into its twelfth year, this festival is brimming with energetic live performances, beautiful storytelling and a good healthy dose of line-dancing.
Get your tickets booked and get ready to sing your lungs out alongside tens of thousands of denim, plaid and fridge-clad country-bumpkins.
Yeeeehaw.
Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival – May
If your loved ones are based in Belfast, there’s no better time to plan your visit than during the 25th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.
Running from Thursday 1st May - Sunday 11th May this year, the festival has exploded in popularity since its humble beginnings back in 2000. Fast-forward a quarter of a century, and there are more than 60,000 people wanting in on the action.
It's become well regarded for its socially inclusive agenda and eclectic programming blend of 'big names', emerging acts and fringe performances.
You can expect 11 whole days of live music, comedy, theatre, spoken word, literature, eclectic performance and street art in dozens of venues across our historic cultural quarter
So that’s a good long window to plan your trip home around. You’re welcome.
We spoil you, we really do.
The Open – July
We’ve been harping on about The Open quite a bit in our other blogs recently. (Click here to read our interview with Charlene Reid, Senior Assistant & PGA Pro at Royal Portrush and here to meet the students on the Performance Golf Programme at Ulster University).
But we’re sure you’ll find it in your heart to forgive us, given the sheer scale of this international event.
Unless you’ve been camping out under a rock for the last wee while, you’ll have heard that The 153rd Open is returning to Royal Portrush this summer.
On 17th-20th July, all of golf’s biggest names will be here to take on the challenging Dunluce Links, and golf fanatics from every corner of the world will be making their way to Portrush in their hundreds of thousands.
Whether or not you’ve got your hands on a ticket, we expect that The Open fever will once again spill out onto every street corner in the North Coast area, with local businesses adding their own unique golfing twist on their products and services.
We strongly suggest you swing by.
The World Snooker Tour – October
From one Open to the next, we’re sticking on the sporting theme.
The World Snooker Tour returns to the Waterfront Hall for the Northern Ireland Open from 19th-26th October 2025.
Last year’s final saw defending champion Wilson take on world number 1 Trump (Judd, not Donald) in a blockbuster showdown for the prestigious Alex Higgins trophy.
If you’re a snooker nerd, you’ll know that what the game sometimes lacks in speed, it always makes up for in unpredictability, strategic gameplay and nail-biting final points.
If you fancy adding this event to your October itinerary, you’re right on cue – you can still pocket some tickets.
But if you leave it much longer?
You’ll be snookered.
Derry~Londonderry Halloween – October
If you plan to catch flights home in time for the snooker, you could easily add this event onto your trip itinerary too.
But first things first. If you’re a Northern Irish person who hasn’t experienced a Derry Halloween, you’d really need to sort that out this year.
Because Derry Halloween is a pretty big deal. In fact, it’s the largest Halloween celebration in Europe!
Steeped in Celtic history, it’s become world-renowned festival that combines ancient traditions with modern culture and draws tens of thousands of visitors from every corner of the world.
From the 28th – 31st October 2025, The Walled City will transform into a Halloween haven, with the worlds of past and present colliding for four nights of spellbinding street celebrations.
We highly recommend you throw you fancy-dress costume into your suitcase and head down to Derry (or up, should we say) for this incredible event.
Expect illumination, aerial performance, pyrotechnics, music, fireworks, and stacks of spooky surprises. We can’t wait!
We could go on and on about amazing things happening right across the country this year. (But we won’t, don’t worry).
Northern Irish diaspora, we want to hear from you. Which of these five 2025 events tickle your fancy? Any others you’d add to the list? Fire us a DM on our Instagram or Facebook. We always love hearing whereabouts our Northern Irish diaspora are, and what they’re up to.
Until then, it’s back to eating our veggies and counting down ‘til pay-day.
