Ones To Watch 2026: Actors, comedians, poets, filmmakers, designers, entrepreneurs and more

Amybeth McNulty
Actor

The 24-year-old was born and raised in Co. Donegal, training in acting and ballet at the An Grianán Youth Theatre in Letterkenny. She became a teenage sensation in 2017 when she won hearts as the titular orphan in Anne With An E, the Canadian period remake of Anne Of Green Gables, which earned the young actor a couple of industry awards.

That’s a pretty good start. Then arrived the juggernaut series that is Stranger Things, and the hundreds of millions of eyeballs that come with it. McNulty was recruited in 2022 for its fourth season as marching band member, and Robin’s sweet and quirky love interest, Vickie. She plays a more prominent part in the show’s fifth and final season and is set to enjoy many more leading roles.

These include her new action thriller Ballistic, where she shares the screen with Game Of Thrones royalty Lena Headey. The story concerns a mother who works for an arms company, who finds out she made the bullet that killed her son.

David Sloane
Entrepreneur

Most of you might be caught in the mud of mental deceleration that comes with asking ChatGPT how to cook a frozen pizza, but others are out there putting the might of artificial intelligence to good use. That includes 23-year-old Cork entrepreneur David Sloane, whose company Cambrean was acquired by US investors for tens of millions at the beginning of last year.

Sloane developed the concept for Cambrean during the Covid lockdown, stemming from his own experiences of having to use multiple devices and apps to track his fitness data while playing football with Cobh Ramblers. The platform was designed to gather data from various tech wearables like Apple Watches and Oura Rings in a single place, using AI algorithms to then analyse that data related to sleep, nutrition, workouts, and vitals, making it easier for users to track their health.

Alex Dunne
Racing driver

Offaly native Alex Dunne was racing karts before he (presumably) knew all of his times tables. His competitive career began at age eight, leading to numerous national titles. He then started climbing the Formula ladder from F4 to F2. The 20-year-old was most recently racing for Rodin Motorsport, whose F1 alumni include Lando Norris and George Russell.

Dunne finished an impressive fifth overall in the 2025 F2 table, clinching victories in Monaco and Belgium and making the podium eight times, in what was a thoroughly impressive debut season. He also scooped the Manley Memorial Trophy for the Irish International Driver of the Year, and there are rumours he’s in talks with F1 team Alpine.
It seems only a matter of time until he’ll be the first Irish Formula One competitor in decades.

Sinéad O’Shea
Filmmaker

The Navan native has built a formidable reputation as a documentarian drawn to trauma, power and resistance, but Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story marks a creative high point. Widely acclaimed for its emotional intelligence and narrative richness, the film reframes O’Brien not as a scandal figure, but as a literary radical shaped – and scarred – by patriarchy.

Through intimate late-life interviews, diaries and archival material, O’Shea delivers a work that is as much about Ireland’s silencing of women as it is about one extraordinary writer. The film sits naturally alongside O’Shea’s earlier successes, including Pray For Our Sinners and A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot, which share her instinct for contextualising personal stories within larger systems of control.

Next, O’Shea turns her gaze outward with All About The Money, premiering in competition at Sundance 2026. Exploring wealth, ideology and rebellion inside one of America’s richest dynasties, it signals a filmmaker expanding her canvas – without losing her moral clarity.

Sinead O’Shea by Conor Horgan

Ruairi Bradley
Director

The Belfast man is already one of Ireland’s most assured young documentary voices. His short film We Beg To Differ, set within Northern Ireland’s underground car-diffing scene, has picked up more than a dozen awards and continues to gather momentum.

There’s been an Oscar-qualifying win at the Galway Film Fleadh; nominations from the London Critics’ Circle and IFTA; and a current nomination for the 2026 European Film Awards. A screening at Clermont-Ferrand, played to a 1,500-strong audience, confirmed the film’s international resonance. What elevates We Beg to Differ beyond subculture portraiture is its emotional intelligence.

Bradley treats differing not as spectacle, but as a lifeline, a tight-knit community offering belonging amid a wider mental-health crisis. Memorial walls, late-night yards and roaring engines are framed with empathy rather than judgment. As the film screens at the 2026 Dublin International Film Festival this February, Bradley emerges as a filmmaker attuned to marginalised worlds – and the fragile hope that keeps them running.

Anna Rodgers
Director/producer

Anna Rodgers is emerging as one of Ireland’s most humane and politically alert filmmakers, with a body of work that insists intimacy is a form of activism. Her RTÉ Storyland short drama Grace, brings the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act vividly to life through a tender, clear-eyed story about love, consent and independence.

Grace is a poignant coming of age drama centred on a woman in her late twenties with Down Syndrome, navigating the complexities of adulthood, independence and first love from within a residential support house. Anchored by Fiadhnait Canning’s remarkable performance, the film refuses sentimentality, instead trusting audiences to sit with complexity – a signature of Rodgers’ approach.

Rodgers’ earlier work shows the same instinct for stories where private lives intersect with structural change. Two Mothers, made through the Netflix Documentary Talent Fund, traces an extraordinary bond between an Irish mother and her Ukrainian surrogate as war redraws the meaning of family. As co-director of How To Tell A Secret, she explored HIV disclosure and stigma with equal sensitivity.

Across fiction and documentary, Rodgers brings marginalised experiences into focus without simplification – making her a filmmaker to watch closely in 2026.

Shane McCarthy
Content creator

Through his authentic reflections on everything from hair transplants and his favourite Chinese takeaway order, to his experiences as a gay Irish Traveller and his struggles with his mental health, the Kerry native has made a career out of defying expectations – emerging in recent years as one of the country’s most beloved online content creators.

As well as garnering over 200,000 followers and 11 million likes on TikTok, McCarthy was crowned Rising InstaStar of the Year back in September, at Stellar’s annual InstaStar Awards, a night that highlights Ireland’s top influencers. More recently, Shane – who’s still in his early twenties – launched his own podcast series, I Said What I Said, which finds him delving deeper into his world in his own unapologetically unfiltered, and often hilariously chaotic, way.

Gar O’Rourke
Director

When the Galwegian checked into a Soviet-era sanatorium outside Odessa in 2021, he expected mud baths and medical kitsch. What he found was something stranger and richer: a microcosm of humanity quietly persisting. That encounter became Sanatorium, his Ukrainian-language documentary now selected by IFTA as Ireland’s submission for the 2026 Oscars – a quietly astonishing achievement for a Galway-born filmmaker working far from home.

Set largely off the battlefield, Sanatorium observes ordinary lives unfolding during wartime: staff running karaoke nights under air-raid sirens, patients seeking healing, love or simply distraction. With humour and restraint, O’Rourke frames resilience not as heroism, but as routine. The film’s deadpan warmth and eye for tragicomedy mark him as a documentarian of rare tonal confidence.

He’s not lingering. Currently filming The Siege Of Paradise, an observational study of over-tourism in Cinque Terre, O’Rourke continues to explore communities under pressure – with empathy, intelligence and an instinct for finding grace in unlikely places.

Aisling O’Mara
Actor

The Dubliner is a performer and emerging creative, whose career is gathering momentum across stage and screen. Following her Gate Theatre debut in POOR, Sonya Kelly’s acclaimed adaptation of Katriona O’Sullivan’s memoir, O’Mara has demonstrated a rare ability to carry emotionally demanding material with clarity and restraint.

The production’s return to the Gate in 2026 only underscores its impact, and her central presence within it. On screen, she appears in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, sharing frames with Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley – a significant marker of her expanding range.

But it’s behind the scenes where her next chapter begins. Babysitter, a short developed through the National Talent Academies’ First Credit Scheme, marks O’Mara’s first screenwriting credit.

Premiering at the 2026 Dublin International Film Festival, the film offers a sharply observed portrait of modern motherhood and female desire, as O’Mara also stars as Ray, a dedicated single mother whose social life has been on hold since her daughter arrived. She is attempting to go on a date that has been put off multiple times. Could tonight be different?

Balancing performance with authorship, O’Mara is quietly positioning herself as a multifaceted voice to watch in 2026.

Emily O’Shea
Fashion designer

Having recently gone viral for her recent t-shirt design featuring President Connolly doing keepie-uppies on the campaign trail, fashion designer Emily O’Shea made serious waves in 2025, earning herself showcases during both Dublin Independent Fashion Week and Ireland Fashion Week, and running the Tógála showcase along with 13 different artists.

With a creative vision centering around humour, sustainability and clever social observations, O’Shea’s brand recently started being stocked in Dublin’s iconic fashion store Om Diva. Inventive, colourful and always impressively smart, the designer’s work is a delightful breath of fresh air in the world of fashion.

Roger O’Sullivan
Comedian

This Cork comedian has been making serious waves on the other side of the Irish Sea over the past 12 months, with his lauded Fekken show landing him the Comedians’ Choice Award for Best Newcomer at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, following a sold-out run at the festival.

His ‘26 is shaping up to be just as massive, as he prepares to bring the show back home for a string of Irish dates, including a stop at the Ambassador Theatre. Blending multimedia comedy with ‘90s video game nostalgia, the phenomenal response to Fekken has established O’Sullivan as one of the most exciting emerging forces in Irish comedy in years – and he’s already working on his follow-up, Only Messing Gear Solid (a title inspired by another gaming classic).

For more nostalgia-tinged laughs, have a listen to his Marty & Roger Member Dat podcast with Marty Gleeson, or dive into his online content at @rogerocomedy

Antonia Campbell-Hughes
Actor

The Derry thesp continues to move with rare assurance between acting and directing, and her trajectory in 2026 looks particularly strong. Last year, she starred in Colum Eastwood’s myth-inflected thriller The Morrígan, the story of an archaeologist who uncovers an ancient tomb in Ireland, releasing a vengeful pagan war goddess and forcing a mother into a fight for her daughter’s soul.

The role showcased Campbell-Hughes’ command of genre material grounded in emotional depth. Next comes The Other Me, arriving in 2026, a cerebral mystery thriller written and directed by Giga Agladze and executive produced by David Lynch.

Starring opposite Rhona Mitra, Campbell-Hughes enters a destabilised psychological landscape, shaped by fractured identity and shifting perception – terrain she navigates with characteristic intensity. Behind the camera, she has already announced herself as a serious filmmaker with the impressive, atmospheric film It Is In Us All, praised for its visual confidence and moral ambiguity.

Actor, director and creative force, Campbell-Hughes remains one of Ireland’s most compelling screen presences to watch.

Ríon Hannora
Fashion designer

A graduate of the Limerick School of Art and Design, Ríon Hannora has established herself as one of the country’s most captivating designers over these past few years. Famed for her unique take on corsetry, the Cork-raised, Dublin-based designer turned plenty of heads with the launch of her unisex bridal collection, titled Sex Before Marriage, during Dublin Independent Fashion Week in September – with her own branded condoms tossed like flower petals during the show.

Well-known for styling the many-headed trad supergroup BIIRD, Hannora has also masterminded some unforgettable looks for the likes of CMAT and Kate Nash; has had her work shown twice at Copenhagen Fashion Week; and scored the Fashion Award at Irish Tatler’s Women of the Year 2025.

She’s remained a strong proponent of the slow fashion movement through it all – and has also used her ever-rising platform to speak out about the lack of support and funding for fashion in Ireland.

Emily Terndrup
Multidisciplinary performer

The revered Cobh-based performer, choreographer and director made waves in 2025 with her play OFFSPRING (A Modern Frankenstein), which she directed, wrote, performed and choreographed.

A genre-bending reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic, the acclaimed work was performed at the Dublin Fringe in September and earned a nominations for Best Production, as well as taking home the prizes for Best Design and Best Performer. It also scooped the Radical Spirit award, which honours “contemporary work which embodies the radical spirit of both Dublin Fringe and Project”.

With this final recognition, Terndrup will receive a guarantee of €3,000 and a week’s run in Project Arts Centre – and get the opportunity to present more of her uniquely bold artistry.

Emily Terndrup by Franziska Strauss

Eva Mary Lucy
Poet

In the thriving Dublin spoken-word poetry scene, Eva Mary Lucy stands as an incredibly powerful and emotionally raw voice.
Increasingly recognised across the country, she was crowned All Ireland Slam Champion and Leinster Slam Champion in 2025, having previously received the award for Talkatives Grand Slam Champion in 2024.
With themes touching on family, grief, womanhood and feminism, and a writing style rich in sharp turns of phrase, the artist’s talents are multifaceted, with plenty more exciting work on the way.

Eva Mary Lucy by pizzaegg

Mia Walsh
Fashion designer

After graduating from NCAD in 2024, the Dublin designer presented her work at Dublin Independent Fashion Week, and the Irish Sea Graduate Show at Ireland Fashion Week.

Known for her genderless and seasonless garments, which channel punk aesthetics and aim to “explore fashion as a tool for self-construction and storytelling”, Walsh’s work often includes careful layering. It oscillates between delicate and robust fabrics and constructions, inspired by unconventional textures like armour.

In 2025, Walsh was also one of 14 designers taking part in Tógála – a showroom event and pop-up shop at the Chocolate Factory, which was part of DIFW, and her bold creations even appeared in Chalk’s music video for ‘Can’t Feel It’.

Mia Walsh by Kety Duran