Electric Picnic returns after two-year Covid absence

Dermot Kennedy, Tame Impala and the Arctic Monkeys will headline the festival in Co Laois in September.

Electric Picnic returns to Stradbally this year (Niall Carson/PA) (PA Archive)

Electric Picnic, the largest music festival in Ireland, will return later this year for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Dermot Kennedy, Tame Impala and the Arctic Monkeys will headline the festival in Co Laois in September.

The festival, which for years has attracted some of the biggest names in music to Ireland, will attract around 70,000 fans to the 600-acre site in Stradbally later this year.

Last year, the music festival was briefly at the centre of a political storm as organisers pushed to hold the event amid a planned easing of Covid-19 restrictions in September 2021.

The effort to hold the festival, which prompted urgent consultations with Culture Minister Catherine Martin and Laois County Council, ultimately came to nothing and the festival was not held.

Major Irish acts, including Snow Patrol and Denise Chaila, will also play the festival this year.