National Ploughing Championships 2026: dates, tickets and a soil health checklist for Screggan
Supply concerns accelerating the shift
The 95th National Ploughing Championships runs from Tuesday 15 to Thursday 17 September 2026 at Screggan, Tullamore, Co Offaly. It is the second year running at Screggan. The National Ploughing Association went back because the site is central and easy to reach, and because 225,500 people came through the gates in 2025. Organisers expect around 250,000 this year.
If you farm, this is the one week of the year when every fertiliser supplier, spreader maker and adviser you might want to question is standing in the same field. The practical details come first. After them, the five soil questions we would ask at any stand, including our own.
Ploughing 2026 at a glance
The essentials:
- Dates: 15, 16 and 17 September 2026
- Venue: Screggan, Tullamore, Co Offaly
- Trade arena hours: 9am to 6pm each day
- Ploughing competitions: 10.30am to 2.30pm
- Gates: close at 4pm. Entry after 3pm is not guaranteed because of traffic restrictions
- Tickets online: €30 for adults, €25 for senior citizens and secondary school students, children under 12 free with a paying adult
- Tickets at the gate: €35, and only if the day has not sold out
- Parking: free, in stubble and grass fields, so bring boots
- Public transport: Bus Éireann shuttles run from Tullamore and Portarlington train stations for a separate fare
- Dogs: guide and assistance dogs only
Tickets and site maps are on the National Ploughing Association website.
What happens over the three days
More than 350 competitors plough across 34 classes, and the Five Nations competition runs on two of the three days. Around the plots sit the trade stands, the livestock rings, the Brown Bread Baking Competition, the fashion shows and the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Arena, back for its 13th year with about forty exhibiting companies.
The trade arena is where the farm buying conversations happen. Fertiliser suppliers, spreader manufacturers, soil testing services and Teagasc advisers are a few minutes’ walk from each other. Nowhere else can you test a spring 2027 plan against that many opinions in one afternoon.
The conversation this year : soil and the cost of nitrogen
Two things shape the fertiliser conversation at Screggan this year.
The first is price. Irish merchant prices in March 2026 reached about €800 a tonne for straight urea, €850 for protected urea and €510 to €520 for CAN, according to ifac’s fertiliser market outlook for 2026 to 2027. The same report notes that the Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 30 to 35% of globally traded fertiliser, and that the EU carbon border levy on imported fertiliser has applied in full since 1 January 2026. The World Bank’s baseline puts its fertiliser price index at 152 in 2027. That is lower than this year, and still well above the 117.6 of 2024.
The second is soil. Teagasc analysed more than 39,000 soil samples in 2025, about 90% of them from grassland. Its March 2026 fertility update reports that 44% of those soils were still below the target pH of 6.2. That is progress on recent years. It also means nearly half of the soils tested cannot make full use of the fertiliser spread on them, whatever it cost.
We heard the shift at Cereals in June. The farmers who sought out our stand were mostly conventional growers, worried about supply and about the farmyard muck they can no longer get hold of. The question has moved on from the cheapest bag of nitrogen to how much of each bag the soil can use. Organic matter, pH and soil biology decide that as much as the analysis printed on the bag.
Five questions to ask at any fertiliser stands
- What is the organic matter content? A pelleted organic fertiliser feeds soil biology as well as the crop. Ask for the percentage, not a description.
- Is it certified, and by whom? For organic land, look for Organic Trust or equivalent certification. OMRI listing matters for export and for garden centre ranges.
- Will it go through my spreader? Pellet size, dust and flow rate decide whether a product spreads evenly at 12 metres or more. Ask for spreader test data. We published our own Dynamo spreader testing update for that reason.
- What happens to price and supply between now and spring? After the past two seasons, a delivery guarantee is worth as much as a headline price.
- Can I trial it on one tramline first? The advice we gave growers after Cereals and Groundswell this summer still holds. Do one tramline, compare it against your standard programme, and let the crop decide. The 2026 Cereals and Groundswell review has what growers told us.
Where SoilWorx fits
SoilWorx makes organic and natural pelleted fertiliser at Mayobridge, Co Down, from poultry manure that is heat-treated, sterilised and pressed into 3 to 5 mm pellets that flow through a standard spreader. The agricultural range:
- Dynamo, a 4-2-3 organic NPK with 75.6% organic matter and a full trace element package
- N-Boost, an 8-2-2 sustained-release nitrogen source for demanding crops
- K-Boost, a 3-2-17 organic potassium fertiliser for potatoes and root crops
- Feather meal, a 13-0-0 slow-release organic nitrogen
Dynamo is OMRI Listed and Organic Trust certified. N-Boost and K-Boost carry Organic Trust certification. Use the fertiliser calculator to work out rates for your fields before you go, and the stockist finder to see who supplies your area.