Watch: Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 launch with Paul Kane

The launch coverage walks through the 2025 programme's foundations: 100 events across nine days, in partnership with more than 40 brands and distilleries. Paul covers the festival's deliberate accessibility, the breadth of programming designed to reach beyond the dedicated whiskey enthusiast audience, and the headline events that anchor the closing weekend — the Whiskey Expo at St Comgall's, the Cocktail Takeover at Common Market, and the Irish Whiskey Industry Awards at the Ulster Reform Club.

Paul Kane has become one of the most recognisable faces in Irish whiskey festival culture — partly because of his consistency in showing up to talk about Belfast Whiskey Week year after year, in interviews with newspapers, on podcasts, and in launch videos like this one. The festival's identity is closely tied to his ability to articulate what it's for and why it matters.

"My passion lies with the history of whiskey, the legacy that it has. I do genuinely believe that Belfast was built on more than just ships," Paul has told The Irish News in long-form interviews. The 2025 launch video carries the same conviction: Belfast Whiskey Week is a heritage project as much as a festival, dedicated to making Belfast's whiskey story visible to a new generation.

Launch videos like this one play an important role in the festival's annual rhythm. For partners, sponsors, journalists and prospective attendees, they're often the first formal moment when the year's programme comes into focus — a kind of public starting gun for the months of communication that follow.

The video is one of several pieces of YouTube content from the 2025 festival cycle, including the official festival programme video and ongoing partner content. For anyone planning to attend Belfast Whiskey Week 2026 or beyond, watching the 2025 launch is a good way to understand how the festival presents itself.

Watch the full video: Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 Launch with Paul O'Kane