Horslips are this year's winner of RTÉ Choice Music Prize's Classic Irish Album

This year’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize classic Irish album for 2026 has been revealed as Horslips’ 1973 album The Táin.

The album is notable for featuring ‘An Dearg Doom’, a riff  based on the traditional pipe and fiddle piece ‘O’Neill’s March’. The Horslips version was later of course interpolated in the Italia 90 Ireland World Cup song ‘Put ‘Em Under Pressure‘.

The Táin is a concept album centred on Irish mythology, and was Horslips’ second album released on their own label in Ireland in 1973 as well as RCA in the UK and Atco in the US.

“We can’t believe it, really. We knew at the time that The Táin was a different kind of album. And we could see that Dearg Doom had a great riff going on. We just didn’t think that it would sustain in the way it has. Both Italia 90 and ‘Saipan’ have served to keep the album and the single surfacing but even without that, there seems to be an inbuilt determination to survive in both. 50 years is a good innings!” – Horslips, 2026

The panel chose The Táin by Horslips as their Classic Irish Album for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize and explain further – “Horslips lasted 10 years – 1970 to 1980. Their impact was immense. They literally changed the course of music in Ireland in the seventies, not just because they fused traditional Irish music with rock and in so doing inspired many local and international acts or that they released 10 albums in that 10-year period leaving a legacy much bigger than that of the defining band of the so-called Celtic Rock genre.

No…maybe the main reason is that they brought their unique brand of music to every barn, every dancehall, every hotel, every disco, every church-hall again and again and again.

They made an instant impact with their debut release but the record that stands out is the follow-up, an ambitious concept album telling the story of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (the cattle raid of Cooley), the legend of early Irish literature dealing with the war between Connacht and Ulster over a prize bull. Fusing traditional music as an influence to develop a new idiom of rock’n’roll that had real relevance to the band’s own experience, one result was that by paying respectful homage to the music of our past and rocking it up to a new, younger, audience, a whole new world of music was opened up.

And, of course, 20 years later the riff from the album’s most famous track brought a whole new audience on board, the soundtrack to Ireland’s first ever world cup finals campaign”.

The judges for this year’s prize are Dave Fanning (Radio and TV Broadcaster), Caroline Henry (Artist Management), Stevo Berube (Artist Management & Music Publicist), with Paul Russell (Radio producer, formerly RTÉ 2FM) as the chairperson. 

The album will be played in full tonight on RTÉ Gold after 6pm.

Horslips: Jim Lockhart, Eamon Carr, Barry Devlin, Charles O’ Connor, Johnny Fean

A few of the band members will attend on the 5^th to collect their award.

“The influence of The Táin is massive, and the pleasure it gives is endless. Where would we be without Dearg Doom? We’d be in 1932.” – John Kelly

Previous winning Classic Irish Albums

2023 – I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got – Sinéad O’ Connor (1990)

2024 – Achtung Baby – U2 (1991)

2025 – Watermark – Enya (1988)

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The Classic Irish Album prize will be presented along with Irish Artist of the Year and Irish Breakthrough Artist that night.

The Irish Song of the Year 2025 will be announced by Tracy Clifford on her 2FM show on the day of the live event and presented to the winner in Vicar St that night. Tracy will also host the live event.

RTÉ Choice Music Prize Conversations will take place on the day, Thursday 5^th March, with four music industry panels running from 12.00-16.30 at BIMM, Francis St. Details to follow later this week.

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