Port of Galway
The docks are a five-minute walk from Eyre Square, past the station and down Dock Road, and they are older than most of the city around them. Ships were tying up by the Spanish Arch in the fourteenth century; in 1380 Richard II allowed merchants of Galway and the Iberian peninsula to trade directly, and the Harbour Commissioners built the Commercial Dock in 1832. The port is about to move again.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Port of Galway, Harbour Hotel on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
What the port does
The Galway Harbour Company runs a port of bulk cargo: fuel, timber, cement and fishery products, roughly 500,000 tonnes in 2022. The inner dock takes ships of up to 6,000 tonnes deadweight and berths up to six at once, and a coastal tide gate keeps the water level inside. From March to September passenger ferries run from the docks to the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher, and the basin is used for sailing and small leisure craft.
The new port
Plans to move and extend the port go back to the start of the century, and a planning application was lodged in January 2014. In April 2026 An Coimisiún Pleanála granted permission for an extension with a deep-water docking facility, a new marina, a naval berth and a spur from the Dublin to Galway railway. Once it is built the present docks are to be redeveloped under the Galway Harbour Project. The model on this page pins the port and the Spanish Arch where it all began.
Questions people ask
Do ferries to the Aran Islands leave from Galway docks?
How big are the ships Galway port can take?
Is Galway getting a new port?
Written from Wikipedia, "Port of Galway" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.