Watch Ed Sheeran play surprise acoustic set with folk band at Irish pub

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Watch Ed Sheeran play surprise acoustic set with folk band at Irish pub

Ed Sheeran surprised fans in Ireland by performing with a folk band at a pub. Check out footage of the moment below.

The chart-topping pop star made a surprise appearance at a music and arts festival in Wexford town yesterday (August 5), performing a handful of Irish folk songs and original tracks at The Sky And The Ground Pub.

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The singer, who was brought up in Suffolk and has a dad from Belfast, performed in the pub as part of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann. Held for one week each August, it is the world’s largest annual festival of Irish music and hosts street performances, intimate gigs and more.

He played alongside Irish bands including Amble, BIIRD, Beoga and Aaron Rowe (as per BBC), and also went outside the venue to ensure fans who couldn’t fit into the crowded space had a chance to hear him perform too.

Outside, he played his hit song ‘Perfect’, while inside he joined up with BIIRD to play the traditional folk track ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’. Other covers included the folk song ‘Raglan Road’, which was written by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh and made popular by The Dubliners.

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The surprise performance comes following Sheeran revealing on Louis Theroux’s podcast that he identifies as Irish, despite being born and raised in England.

“I class my culture as Irish. I think that’s what I grew up with,” he said (via BBC). “We’d spend all of our holidays in Ireland. My first musical experiences were in Ireland, I grew up with trad music in the house. So I identify culturally as Irish, but I was obviously born and raised in Britain.”

“I don’t overthink it but I do feel like my culture is something that I’m really proud of and grew up with and want to express,” he added. “I feel like just because I was born in Britain doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to just be [British]… I don’t think there’s any rules to it. It should be how you feel and how you were raised and what you lean into.”

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Find more footage from yesterday’s surprise performance below, and here for a temporary time on Sheeran’s Instagram Stories.

It also marks another of the numerous surprise gigs the singer has been making in recent times. In March, he performed a surprise acoustic set at a Boston pub to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, in April he played a surprise pop-up show at King’s Cross station in London to celebrate his new album ‘Play’, and in May he then played an impromptu show in Sheffield city centre alongside JME and freestyle rapper Maja M.

Earlier this year, Sheeran also got fans talking when he covered Chappell Roan and performed his new single ‘Azizam’ as part of an undercover busking set in New York, and joined Olivia Rodrigo as a surprise guest at her BST Hyde Park show.

In May he also played a surprise set at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend, and has since been taking a pop-up English pub ‘The Old Phone’ on the road – bringing it to his hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts and eventually Coachella.

The performances are part of the campaign around ‘Play’, which and sees Sheeran look to “connect on a more intimate level with his supporters”. It is due out on September 12 and you can pre-order it here.

Sheeran has said that ‘Play’ was made as a “direct response” to the “darkest period” of his life, and he is due to play a run of European shows from May to September 2025, as well as a trio of shows at Ipswich Town’s Portman Road, before finishing up the year with performances in Bhutan, India, Qatar and Bahrain. Visit here for tickets.

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