A look at the wonderfully weird All Ireland Air Guitar Championships

It’s Monday evening in the basement of Dublin dive bar r.i.o.t. and performers are taking to the stage and thrash about in a bid to be crowned the Jack Daniel’s All-Ireland Air Guitar Champion 2023. The winner will take home a ‘rock ’n’ roll’ gong and go on to represent Ireland at the World Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, Finland, this summer.

The event has been running here since 1996 and its slogan is ‘Make Air Not War’. “The idea is that if you’re holding an air guitar, you can’t be holding a gun,” contestant Sven ‘Spandex’ Smith explains.