The National Festival of Youth Theatres (NFYT) is the largest gathering of youth theatres in Ireland. The Festival, which happens in July every year, is a unique experience that provides young people with a fantastic opportunity to learn new skills, work with specialist facilitators, and get to know young people from youth theatres across the country.
Since 2011, the NFYT takes place at Kilkenny College. It's an action packed, fully residential programme that includes specialist workshops, and full programme of social activities.
13 Youth Theatre Ireland affiliated youth theatres participate in 5 days of workshops and social get-togethers in the first week of July.
150 young people, adult volunteers, artists and staff from across the 4 provinces, take part in our full five-day residential and immersive experience. It’s rightly dubbed #thebestweekever.
How Much Does It Cost?
Youth Theatre Ireland believes that all young people should be able to participate in our programmes so there is no participation fee.
Youth theatres are responsible for providing at least two leaders to support young people’s participation in this online festival. If your youth theatre faces additional costs to pay leaders for their festival participation, we would encourage you to fundraise for these additional costs or include them within your youth theatre’s budget for the year. It’s important to Youth Theatre Ireland that any costs that are passed on to young people are not presented as a Festival participation fee charged by our organisation. Don’t worry! If your Expression of Interest is successful, we’ll provide you with some fundraising tips.
How Are Groups Selected?
We hope lots of affiliated youth theatres would like to take part in the Festival year! Every spring an open call is put out to our 50+ affiliated youth theatres. We will use the following criteria to select participating groups:
- We will prioritise youth theatres that have not been to the festival before or have not been in a few years.
- We will prioritise youth theatres that have the capacity to participate (e.g., can send 6 to 8 members, provide 2 leaders over the age of 21, complete administration for festival etc.)
- We will try to ensure a regional spread of participating youth theatres.
- We will try to ensure that there’s a mix of experience amongst the youth theatres and leaders at the festival.
Participating Youth Theatres 2025
ACTIVATE YOUTH THEATRE
BACKSTAGE YOUTH THEATRE
CABINTEELY YOUTH THEATRE
DLR MILL YOUTH THEATRE Group
DREAMSTUFF YOUTH THEATRE
GLENGARRIFF YOUTH THEATRE GROUP
GRIESE YOUTH THEATRE
MAD YOUTH THEATRE
MAKING WAVES YOUTH THEATRE
ROSCOMMON COUNTY YOUTH THEATRE
WONDER YOUTH THEATRE