Belfast Culture Night to return in September 2025 after six-year absence, says city's new Night Tsar - though overhaul needed to give artists and performers involvement and pay

Michael Stewart revealed that the much-missed event, which used to see crowds of around 100,000 people packing the streets of the Cathedral Quarter every September, will return after a six-year absence.

Speaking at a panel discussion about the city’s night-time economy as part of the Sound Of Belfast festival on November 13, the Night Tsar said: “Getting Culture Night back for September 2025 will happen.”

He warned, however, that it won’t be quite the same event, as the city’s creative community is demanding some changes – especially when it comes to providing providing their time, skills and energy for free when Culture Night’s tens of thousands of revellers reliably generated a huge amount of cash for bars, clubs and restaurants.

Said Mr Stewart: “It will not happen the way we all knew it, because it probably outgrew what it needed to be."

He said Culture Night wound up “too much out in the streets and not enough back in the grassroots venues, where artists should and will be paid”.

And everyone involved in a consultation around getting it up and running again, which includes local creatives and Stormont officials, is adamant that the local council won’t mastermind it, he added.

"We’re very clearly saying when Culture Night comes, it should not and will not be delivered by Belfast City Council,” said the Night Tsar.

"It needs to be delivered by people with skin in the game, by people who understand [and] know what they’re doing.

"So it will happen.”

Mr Stewart specifically suggested Cathedral Quarter venues the Oh Yeah Centre, The Black Box and The Mac, as well as former Culture Night director Adam Turkington, as the kind of organisations and people who should be steering the event.

The last full Culture Night was in 2019, though some smaller events were staged post-pandemic.

Originally developed as a showcase for the city’s artistic community, businesses and heritage in 2009, within a few years Culture Night had grown into a huge event that closed off streets around the Cathedral Quarter from mid-afternoon until well after 10pm.

Main areas boasted parades and open-air cookery, martial arts demonstrations and professional wrestling, while more adventurous revellers could catch everything from live painting in art galleries to singer-songwriters in the quarter’s iconic St Anne’s Cathedral, to techno DJs in a disused bank and garage rock bands in a hairdresser’s.

Taking place as an online series of films and livestreams during 2020’s lockdown year, it changed direction in 2021 to become a small-scale family-friendly light and sound installation, but struggled to recapture its pre-Covid popularity and visibility.

In 2022, organisers the Cathedral Quarter Trust agreed to take a year off after a review carried out in conjunction with Belfast City Council concluded the event had lost its focus. It hasn’t come back since

In 2023, Stormont withdrew its funding due to budget pressures, leading to the Cathedral Quarter Trust shuttering its day to day operations; this year, the council pulled the plug on an attempt to revive the event.

At the time Belfast’s Deputy Lord Mayor, Aine Groogan, described Culture Night’s continuing absence from the city’s cultural calendar as “embarrassing”.