Dublin & County Sligo, Ireland

Ireland's set-jetting credentials in 2026 rest primarily on Normal People, the Hulu and BBC Three adaptation of Sally Rooney's 2018 novel that became one of the most-discussed television events of the pandemic year (2020) and has sustained remarkable cultural longevity through streaming. The show follows Connell and Marianne from County Sligo to Trinity College Dublin, and the filming split between these two contrasting locations creates one of the most geographically coherent set-jetting journeys in Irish tourism. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland's oldest university (founded 1592), features extensively in the show's university sequences: the college's historic Front Square, the Robert Emmet Theatre, the Berkeley Library forecourt, and the college's cricket pitch all appear. Tourism Ireland reports that Dublin ranks first among Irish filmmaking destinations, with 104 separate film and television productions shot in the city, making it the most densely set-jetted capital city in Ireland by a significant margin. The Trinity College Book of Kells attraction, which predates Normal People by 1,200 years (the manuscript dates to approximately 800 AD), now attracts over 650,000 visitors annually and benefits from the college's renewed international visibility. County Sligo provides the show's rural Irish counterpoint: Tubbercurry (Connell's hometown exterior), Streedagh Beach (the Atlantic coastline featured in romantic scenes), and the distinctive silhouette of Ben Bulben mountain (associated with W.B. Yeats, who is buried at its foot) all feature in the series. Sligo Tourism has developed a dedicated Normal People location map for visitors, and the county's combination of prehistoric landscapes (Carrowmore megalithic cemetery, one of Ireland's largest, dates to 3,600 BC) and contemporary literary associations creates a multi-layered tourism proposition that extends well beyond fandom.