Glen Hansard has been named as the motorcyclist who died in the early hours of the morning in a single-vehicle collision near Dublin’s Strawberry Beds.
The Frames bandleader, singer-songwriter and Oscar winner was 56. He was treated at the scene but was pronounced dead a short time later.
His death was reported via various outlets a short time later.
Hansard was one of Ireland’s most notable singer-songwriters in the last 30 years, a singer in The Frames, who played Outspan in The Commitments and won an Oscar for his song in the John Carney film Once in 2007.
In recent years, Hansard had collaborated with Eddie Vedder (of Pearl Jam) among others, hand had developed a strong reputation in American music circles.
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At home, he was front and centre at the housing protest at Apollo House in 2016, and was a key driver of the annual Christmas Eve busk on Grafton Street, which raised funds for the Simon Community every year. He was also partly responsible for the start of Other Voices in Dingle having played the first one after conversations with Philip King.
He is survived by his partner Maire Saaritsa and a young son Christy.
His management put out a statement confirming the news saying:
With broken hearts we announce the passing of Glen Hansard who passed away, in the early hours of this morning, following a road traffic accident in Dublin.
Glen’s family is deeply shocked and heartbroken by this tragic loss and respectfully requests privacy at this extremely difficult time.
The family is grateful for the support they have received and wishes to thank the emergency services who attended the scene.
As this matter remains the subject of an active Garda investigation, no further comment will be made at this time.
Glen Hansard: a modern Irish music songwriter and worldwide success
Glen Hansard was born in Dublin in April 1970 and raised in Ballymun. He left school at thirteen to busk on Grafton Street, a formative thing in his career where he learned to project and sing loudly to get attention.
In 1990 he formed The Frames, whose rotating line-up came to centre on Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Graham Hopkins, Joe Doyle and Rob Bochnik. The bassist at the time was John Carney who left to make films. The following year Hansard was cast as Outspan Foster in the Alan Parker film The Commitments in 1991, which put his face in front of an international audience 15 years before his music did.
The Frames were signed to Island by Chris Blackwell, released Another Love Song in 1991 and were dropped almost immediately, an experience Hansard has described in blunt terms as a shock and a real injury, and one that shaped everything after it.
Fitzcarraldo (1995), led by the lead single ‘Revelate’, was the next response – the record where the band stopped chasing a label’s idea of who they were. For the Birds (2001), the live Set List (2003), Burn the Maps (2004) and The Cost (2006) followed, and by the mid-2000s The Frames were the biggest independent band in Ireland with an extremely devotional audience.
John Carney’s micro-budget 2007 film Once cast Hansard as a busker opposite Czech musician Markéta Irglová, the pair writing and performing the songs themselves.
‘Falling Slowly’ won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008, and Hansard’s breathless acceptance speech combined with the Academy bringing Irglová back onstage after she’d been played off, remains one of the more genuinely liked moments in Oscar history.
The duo recorded as The Swell Season, releasing a self-titled album in 2006 and Strict Joy in 2009, with the 2011 documentary offering an unsparing account of what sudden success did to the relationship at its centre.
Once: The Musical, with a book by Enda Walsh, opened on Broadway in 2012 and took eight Tony Awards from eleven nominations, including Best Musical.
His solo catalogue was the largest part of his work: Rhythm and Repose (2012), Didn’t He Ramble (2015), Between Two Shores (2018), the drone-heavy Paris-made outlier This Wild Willing (2019) and All That Was East Is West of Me Now (2023).
Alongside it runs a long collaborative thread — the Drive All Night EP with Eddie Vedder, the Flag Day soundtrack with Vedder and Cat Power, touring as one of The Earthlings, a role in Cyrano at the Dessner brothers’ invitation, and a 2024 support slot on Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter tour.
In Ireland his profile has never been purely musical. He was the most visible public face of Home Sweet Home, the December 2016 occupation of Apollo House on Tara Street, going on the Late Late Show that same night to call it an act of civil disobedience and openly illegal; the building was vacated under High Court order the following January.
He also started what became the annual Christmas Eve busk for Dublin Simon Community an impromptu session on Grafton Street in 2010 which has continued ever since.
His current record is Don+t Settle – Transmissions East & West, billed as his sixth solo album and released in two volumes on Plateau / Secretly — Vol. 1 on 24 April 2026 and Vol. 2 on 26 June.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
