The Ballinasloe Horse Fair

Ballinasloe Horse Fair dates: 2026, 2027 and 2028

The fair begins on the Sunday before the first Tuesday in October and lasts seven days, so its dates can be read off the calendar. In 2026 it runs from Sunday 4 October 2026 to Sunday 10 October 2026. In 2027 it runs from Sunday 3 October 2027 to Sunday 9 October 2027, and in 2028 from Sunday 1 October 2028 to Sunday 7 October 2028. The parade is on the opening Sunday and Country Fair Day closes the week. These dates follow the fair's own rule; the organisers publish the confirmed programme each year.

The week

The fair runs seven days. The parade opens it on the Sunday; through the week there are the Queen of the Fair contest, fireworks, tug-of-war, dog shows, singing competitions, arts events and a funfair, and a large street market takes over the town. The horses themselves, sale and purchase, racing and show jumping, are concentrated on the six-acre fair green on Society Street. Everything builds to the second weekend, whose Sunday, Country Fair Day, was traditionally the day the country people came in.

Older than the records

The fair has been the October Fair, the Great Horse Fair and the Ballinasloe October Fair, and it once served every kind of farming in east Galway and south Roscommon, with farmers from the east of Ireland coming west to buy stock. The town's name, Béal Átha na Sluaighe, the ford-mouth of the hostings, records its old role as a gathering place for the clans, which is why local tradition treats the fair as ancient. By the late eighteenth century The Times was reporting sales of 65,758 sheep and 6,565 bullocks in a single fair.

The fair has a long association with the Travelling community, who gather here as they do at Appleby in Westmorland; horses were central to their life on the road, and many still breed them, though older Travellers say some of the traditions are fading. In 2011 the fair fell in the presidential election campaign and became a stop on the trail.