The Irish pub is back — and punters are getting the craic
There was a time when the Irish pub was as much a fixture of the British high street as the pound shop, the bookies and a Greggs.
O’Neill’s was everywhere, pouring Guinness, serving food, showing the sport and finding an excuse for somebody to pick up a microphone.
Scruffy Murphy’s colonised city centres and student towns. Waxy O’Connor’s offered the more theatrical end of the market, with cavernous venues designed to make drinking a pint feel like an evening out in itself.
Then there were the independents. An Irish surname above the door. Guinness mirrors on the walls. Enough dark wood to fill a row of Victorian terraces.
They were everywhere. And for a while, they were the place to be. There was usually music. There was sport. There was Guinness.
And there was that intangible ingredient which the modern hospitality industry has spent millions trying to package and sell back to us. Atmosphere.
You could go in with your mates and leave having made three more. You could watch the football, listen to a band and argue about the rugby.
Then the dark wood began to look dated. The shamrocks became a cliché. The Guinness mirrors multiplied. Somewhere along the way, the Irish pub stopped feeling like Ireland and started feeling like an Irish pub someone had ordered from a catalogue.
Gradually, the Irish pubs began to disappear. The big chains retreated. The high street moved on. Cocktail bars arrived. Craft beer took off. Wine bars became fashionable. Casual dining exploded.
The Irish pub, once almost unavoidable, suddenly looked like a relic of another night out. Which makes what is happening now rather interesting. Because the Irish pub is back. And this time, the pitch is not necessarily that it is Irish. It is that it is a proper pub.
In Leeds, the former George pub on Great George Street has been closed for four years. Now £430,000 is being spent bringing it back to life.
Tony Lumb outside The George in Leeds City Centre
Heineken-owned Star Pubs and West Yorkshire operator TL Inns are transforming it into The Galway Girl, with the doors expected to open in November and 15 new jobs being created. It will be TL Inns’ second Irish pub, following the opening of its first Galway Girl in Pontefract in July 2024.
Tony Lumb, founder of TL Inns, says the success of the Pontefract pub has convinced him there is an appetite for something more authentic. “Authentic Irish pubs, as opposed to theme pubs, are having a moment,” he said. “People want the craic, the warm and welcoming atmosphere and live entertainment that they associate with a proper Irish pub.”
Lumb has 38 years’ experience in the pub trade and now operates 13 pubs and a club across West Yorkshire.
He says the Leeds project is not about taking an old-fashioned Irish-pub formula and putting it back on the high street. It is about taking
“We’ve had a tremendous success with our first Irish pub. I have every confidence that this Leeds city centre pub will be equally popular, breathing new life into a derelict building,” he said.
That distinction – between an Irish pub and an Irish-themed pub – may be at the heart of the revival. Because the first great Irish-pub boom was, in many ways, a triumph of branding. The 1990s and early 2000s saw Irish pubs spread across Britain at remarkable speed.
O’Neill’s became one of the biggest branded Irish pub concepts, combining food, live music, sport and Guinness. Scruffy Murphy’s took the formula into city centres and student towns. Waxy O’Connor’s turned the interior itself into part of the attraction.
But then the formula became the problem. When there was one Irish pub in town, it was distinctive. When there were five, it wasn’t. The shamrocks, dark timber, Celtic imagery and Guinness branding began to feel mass-produced.
The Irish pub had become a theme. And themes have a shelf life. At the same time, the British night out became more complicated.
Cocktail bars, craft breweries, wine bars and premium casual restaurants gave customers an ever-expanding choice of ways to spend an evening. The Irish pub was suddenly competing not just with other pubs but with an entire hospitality industry offering new experiences.
Then the economics got tougher. Large city centre pubs are expensive to run. Rents, rates, staffing and energy costs rose, while alcohol consumption came under pressure.
The old model depended on volume – large premises, large crowds and plenty of drinks. That became increasingly difficult to make work. But the era when every high street seemed to need one was over.
Or so it appeared. Because something rather unexpected has happened at the bar. Recent Research from DesignMyNight found that new Irish hospitality openings jumped by more than 71 per cent in 2025 compared with the previous year.
And this is not simply another wave of Guinness-led pubs. The new generation spans traditional Irish bars and live-music venues alongside Irish American restaurants, wine bars, breweries, food-led concepts and pop-ups, with growth from venues such as Nancy Spains, Molly Mc’s, Dirty O’Sullivans, Fibber Magees, Katie O’Brien’s, Inis stretching from London and Manchester into regional cities.
Irish tavern chain, Katie O’Brien’s has grown from seven sites in mid-2025 to 16 by July 2026, more than doubling its estate in little over a year. Its latest openings have taken the brand into Barnsley, Manchester and Birmingham, with further sites in the pipeline.
The business is owned by Newcastle-based Innvest Group, led by brothers Gordon and Jonathan Codona, who are also behind Innspired Leisure.
It is a striking rate of expansion for a format that, not so long ago, looked like yesterday’s pub industry. And its proposition is remarkably familiar — live music, Guinness, sport and a big dose of what the industry might now call ‘experience’, but which the Irish have traditionally called the craic.
Even Irish food is travelling. The spice bag – that distinctly Irish Chinese combination of fried chicken, chips, spices and curry sauce – has escaped its traditional takeaway setting and begun appearing far beyond Irish venue
DesignMyNight recorded more than 4,248 page views for the dish in just 90 days, suggesting that curiosity about Irish food and culture is extending well beyond the traditional audience.
Guinness has also come roaring back. A recent report revealed that Guinness’s share of the UK on-trade market rose from 9.3 per cent in 2022 to 17.5 per cent in 2025. Diageo has reported an 8.8 per cent increase in Guinness sales across Europe.
Murphy’s stout meanwhile, is being rolled out across hundreds of Wetherspoon pubs as it takes on Guinness for a new generation of stout drinkers. Heineken reported Murphy’s draught sales up 176 per cent in 2024, with independent free-trade pub sales up 236 per cent.
Elsewhere, independent operators are finding that the things which once made Irish pubs successful – music, sport, hospitality and community – are becoming valuable again.
Perhaps because the modern customer isn’t necessarily looking for somewhere to drink more. They are looking for somewhere worth going out for.
The chains of the 1990s sold the idea of Ireland. The new operators are selling the idea of a good pub. There is a difference. The Guinness mirrors may have multiplied beyond all reasonable measure first time around. The shamrocks may have become a cliché.
But strip all that away and there was always a very simple proposition underneath. A good pint. A bit of music. A match on the television. A warm welcome.
And a room full of people. In a world in which so much social interaction happens through screens, that suddenly looks rather valuable again. It is designed for human beings.
So perhaps the Irish pub didn’t really disappear. Perhaps Britain simply got distracted. Now, as The Galway Girl prepares to open its doors in Leeds, the old formula is being dusted down and given another chance.
Not the theme. Not the shamrocks. Not the idea of pretending every pub in Britain is a little corner of County Cork. Just the craic and decent pint.
