The O’Neill’s October Seis – Main London Concert

Please note: This is a standing event. 

From a family gathering in Naas to New York, Manchester, Spain and towns across Ireland and Britain, the O’Neill’s October Seis has spent more than 20 years following the Irish diaspora around the world. On Saturday 24 October, that journey brings the Seis to one of the most significant stages for Irish culture outside Ireland: The Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith.

This will be the centrepiece of the first ever London October Seis – a full evening of live music celebrating the family, musicians and songs that have kept an extraordinary tradition alive for more than two decades. For an event built around passing Irish music from one generation to another, the setting could scarcely be more appropriate.

The home of Irish arts and culture in London

The Irish Cultural Centre opened in Hammersmith in 1995 and has grown into what it describes today as the UK’s leading centre dedicated to the promotion and celebration of Irish arts and culture abroad. Its modern, purpose-built home contains a professional performance auditorium alongside an art gallery, library, bar and cultural spaces, creating somewhere Irish music, theatre, literature, film, language and visual art can be presented at the highest level. 

The list of people who have appeared or been welcomed there gives an indication of the Centre’s standing. Mary Black. Sharon Shannon. Colm Tóibín. Edna O’Brien. Dara Ó Briain. Ardal O’Hanlon. Dylan Moran, Luke Bloom, Garron Noone. Its guests have also included King Charles III, who visited as part of the Centre’s 25th anniversary celebrations.

Its musical programme continues to bring some of Ireland’s finest artists to London, from internationally celebrated performers to custodians of traditional Irish music and emerging voices from a new generation. On 24 October, the O’Neill family gets to add its own name to that history. From Joe O’Neill to London At the heart of the October Seis is one man.

 Joe O’Neill of Athy. A musician, teacher and bandleader, Joe passed his love of music through a large family. He died in 1989, but the music didn’t stop… His children played… Then their children played. The family spread across Ireland, Britain, America and further afield, but music remained the thing that repeatedly brought them back together. Because Joe was born on 10 October, his family decided to create an annual October gathering in his memory.

The first O’Neill’s October Seis took place in Naas in 2005, combining a family reunion with live music and fundraising for charity. Then something unusual happened. Instead of returning to the same venue every year, the Seis began travelling. Each edition would be hosted somewhere an O’Neill – or someone close to the family – had made a home.

Over the following two decades, the October Seis found itself in Naas, Cavan, Athy, Westport, Sligo, Tewkesbury, Manchester, New York and Nerja in Spain, among other destinations. Wherever the family travelled, musicians joined them. Friends became part of the extended Seis family. Money was raised for local causes. And the musical tradition Joe O’Neill had helped begin continued through another generation. From the session to the stage

The London weekend begins on Friday 23rd October with an open Seisiún at the London Irish Centre Camden. Saturday is different. Saturday night is when the October Seis takes to the stage. For one night, the informal family sessions, the songs passed around bars, the musicians who have travelled to different editions and the next generation of the tradition come together in the performance space of the Irish Cultural Centre Hammersmith. There will be music across the night. It promises to be less a conventional concert than a celebration of everything that has happened over the previous 20 years.

Irish traditional music sits at its heart, but the October Seis has always reflected the people playing it. Folk, ballads, contemporary songs and the occasional unexpected choice all find their way into the weekend. The common thread isn’t genre. It’s people playing music together. There is also something significant about taking the Seis into this particular room. The Irish Cultural Centre doesn’t merely host Irish performers. Preserving, presenting and passing on Irish culture is the reason the Centre exists.

Alongside its concert programme, it teaches Irish language, music and dance and has created a permanent London home in which both internationally recognised artists and new generations of performers can practise and share Irish culture. That makes Saturday night’s concert feel like considerably more than another stop on the tour.

The October Seis began because one generation wanted to remember the musical legacy left to them. Twenty-one years later, younger generations of that family are carrying it forward. To celebrate that tradition on a stage dedicated to doing precisely the same thing for Irish culture feels extraordinarily fitting. 

London joins the story. The 2025 October Seis marked the tradition’s ’20th anniversary in Athy’ the town where Joe O’Neill’s story began. The natural question afterwards was: Where next? For 2026, the answer is London. A city in which Irish music has thrived for generations. A city in which countless Irish families have built new branches while holding onto the traditions they brought with them. And a city with institutions such as the Irish Cultural Centre ensuring those traditions aren’t simply remembered, but continually renewed.

On Saturday 24 October, the October Seis becomes part of that story. Money raised across the weekend will support the Irish Cultural Centre and London Irish Centre, helping the two organisations continue their work supporting Irish culture and community in London.

For the O’Neill family, it will be the culmination of a journey that began with a small gathering in Naas more than two decades ago. For everyone else, you don’t need to know an O’Neill. You don’t need to have attended one of the previous Seis weekends. You don’t even need to know the story before you arrive. You just need to come through the doors.

Because for one Saturday night in Hammersmith, a family tradition that has travelled thousands of miles is taking its place on one of Irish London’s great stages.