Dust off the flour, dig out the family recipe and get baking – Limerick is searching for a great soda bread! As part of Linger: Limerick Festival of Food, Heritage and Place, we’re inviting bakers from across Limerick – from passionate home bakers to professional chefs and bakers – to take part in a celebration of one of Ireland’s best-loved food traditions.
Soda bread has been at the heart of Irish home baking for generations. Made from the simplest of ingredients – flour, buttermilk, bread soda and salt – it is a bread shaped by place, resourcefulness and recipes passed from one generation to the next. In Limerick, with its rich farming, dairy, market and baking traditions, it is part of a wider food heritage that is still very much alive today.
So, what does Limerick soda bread taste like in 2026?
We want to find out. Bring us the brown bread your grandmother taught you to make, a treasured family recipe scribbled into an old notebook or give the tradition a new twist with local grains, seeds, herbs, treacle or an idea entirely your own. We’re celebrating the recipes we’ve inherited - and the new traditions being created in Limerick kitchens today.
There will be two competition categories - Amateur and Professional.
And there’s something special at stake: the prize is the inaugural Linger: Limerick Festival of Food, Heritage and Place Trophy, celebrating the very best of Limerick soda bread and the people keeping this much-loved food tradition alive.
The competition will be judged by local foodies in the historic Milk Market.
Come along to the judging
The judging event will take place at 3pm on Sunday, 13 September 2026, in the Milk Market, Limerick, and everyone is welcome to attend. Come along, meet the bakers, see the breads and join us for the presentation of the inaugural Linger: Limerick Festival of Food, Heritage and Place Trophy.
The competition forms part of Linger: Limerick Festival of Food, Heritage and Place, Limerick’s celebration of food, place and heritage, inspired by the principles of slow tourism: taking time to discover the stories, people, traditions and flavours that make a place distinctive.
Whether your soda bread recipe has been handed down through five generations or invented five days ago, we want to taste it.
How to enter
Pre-register by emailing tourism@limerick.ie, then bake your very best soda bread and bring your loaf along on the day, ready for judging.
- Sunday, 13 September 2026 | Judging at 3pm
- Limerick Milk Market
- Amateur & Professional categories
- Prize: The inaugural Linger: Limerick Festival of Food, Heritage and Place Trophy
- All welcome.
Roll up your sleeves, get the oven on and bring us your best loaf.
Traditional. Inventive. Unmistakably Limerick.
Events published on Limerick.ie are subject to change. Readers are advised to check with the organiser for further details.
