Creative Brain Week is back for 2026!
Posted on: 27 February 2026
Now in its fifth year, the event returns to Dublin next week, March 2–6, 2026, seeding new ideas into society, culture and health with talks, exhibitions and workshops.
In an exciting development for 2026, the programme will move between Trinity’s Naughton Institute and Samuel Beckett Theatre, The Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. All events are free, but due to space limitations in-person events must be booked in advance. For details on booking tickets, visit www.creativebrainweek.com.
This year’s theme is ‘Thinking. Better. Together’. Over the week, scientists, psychiatrists, neurologists and psychologists from Ireland and around the world, along with artists, eminent academics and people with lived experience, will share insights on reducing the impact of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease—as ideas born at Creative Brain Week in Dublin impact culture, commerce and care across the globe.
Iracema Leroi, Site Director of the Global Brain Health Institute and Professor in Geriatric Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin said,
"It feels particularly fitting that Creative Brain Week 2026 is the opening event in the Global Brain Health Institute’s 10‑year anniversary celebrations, as in many ways the event acts as a microcosm of GBHI itself—bringing together diverse disciplines, perspectives and practices to advance brain health worldwide.
“In 2026, the fifth year of Creative Brain Week, the programme will extend both within and beyond Trinity—from the Beckett Theatre on campus to renowned cultural institutions including The Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The event’s continued evolution reflects the growing importance of science-arts collaboration and enables us to highlight how these fields are coming together for better brain health. Creativity really can be curative—for individuals and for societies."
Dominic Campbell co-founder of Creative Aging International and co-producer of Creative Brain Week said,
“Ireland is one of the countries that is leading the conversation around brain health and this week—at the fifth Creative Brain Week we are shining a light on topics that we believe can make a difference in and to the lives of those who are living with neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. We are delighted that this year we have an exhibition that showcases the images from the groundbreaking Lancet article ‘Visualising relationships between the arts and health’ published in Autumn 2025—the first curated photography essay in The Lancet in its 202-year history. This exhibition is for us a real testament to why Creative Brain Week matters."
On the first day of the conference, the Pratchett Prize—named in honour of award-winning author Terry Pratchett, whose life’s work was donated to Trinity College—will be awarded to a very worthy recipient who has made a meaningful effect on challenging the stigma associated with Alzheimer’s disease and improving the lives of those affected. Joining previous winners, Irish actor Bryan Murray and Deirdre Kinahan (2024) and Fiona Flavin and Sinead Gallivan of Singing for the Brain (2025), the new awardee will continue this important legacy.
Creative Brain Week will include compelling talks on how neuroscience can improve democracy, “Thinking. Better. Together. Through the Senses: Sound” which explores music as a poly-pill,” and “How designing for brain health can help to tackle the loneliness epidemic.” Plus, “Unseen Senses” will explore how neuroscience is reshaping the traditional understanding of the five senses—sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch—into an estimated twenty human senses, including whether you feel welcome.
For a full schedule of Creative Brain Week log onto: www.creativebrainweek.com
Media Contact:
Ciara O’Shea | Media Relations | coshea9@tcd.ie | +353 1 896 4204