Mary from Dungloe (festival)
Irish music festival in Dungloe, County Donegal
The Mary From Dungloe International Festival is an Irish music festival held annually, usually at the end of July in the small town of Dungloe, County Donegal. The festival is centred on a pageant to find out which contestant has the spirit of the festival, who is then crowned "Mary From Dungloe". The winner of the contest holds this title for a year and acts as an ambassador for the festival. Irish emigrant communities from around the world, as well as some Irish counties and towns, participate by nominating a young woman, endearingly titled a "Mary", to represent their community at the contest. The festival has grown in popularity over the years and now regularly attracts tens of thousands of visitors to the area. The festival is inspired by the song "Mary from Dungloe" as the Rose of Tralee festival is by "The Rose of Tralee". In 2019, the festival celebrated its 52nd anniversary, with Roisin Maher from New York becoming Mary From Dungloe 2019.
Participating communities
Many communities around the world with links to County Donegal have their own local contests to pick their community's "Mary" who subsequently is nominated to travel to Dungloe to compete in the Mary From Dungloe contest. Irish communities who have entered contestants include:
Traditional festival events
There are a number of traditional events which are run every year as part of the festival. Here are just a few examples:
2026 Contestants
The 2026 'Marys' for the festival were:
Katie McClafferty – Connacht
Rhiana Wasson – Donegal
Caoimhe Bermingham – Dublin
Shauna McDonagh – Dungloe
Cara Molloy – Edinburgh
Jamie-Mai Nic Giolla Easbuic – Gaeltacht
Maria Neely – Glasgow
Maria Boner – Liverpool
Eva O’Sullivan – London
Clodagh Doughty – Midlands
Nellie Fitzpatrick – New York
Molly Russell – North East England
Kylie Brogan – Philadelphia
Katie Sweeney – Ulster
Gracie Trimble – Wild Atlantic Way
Eva O'Sullivan, the London Mary, was crowned the 2026 Mary from Dungloe on 2 August 2025.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mary from Dungloe (festival)” as irish music festival in Dungloe, County Donegal. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as irish music festival in Dungloe, County Donegal. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6781028. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2026 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary from Dungloe (festival)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.