Glen Hansard, the Irish singer-songwriter who won an Academy Award for the film Once, died on 29 July 2026 at the age of 56 after a single-vehicle motorcycle crash in Dublin. He sustained fatal injuries in the crash, which occurred on a Wednesday, according to The New York Times and WFUV.

Hansard was born in 1970 and was best known as the frontman of the Dublin rock band the Frames. He reached a global audience with Once, the 2007 film in which he starred and co-wrote the music alongside Markéta Irglová, his co-star and partner in the duo Swell Season. Their song "Falling Slowly" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The stage adaptation of Once went on to win eight Tony Awards.

Tributes arrived from across the music world. Bono published a tribute to U2's Instagram and Facebook accounts on the Thursday following Hansard's death, calling him "an angelic presence," "a voice of the streets," and "the shining star of the Christmas Eve Busk" (Rolling Stone). He also described Hansard as "a choir of angels in one man," according to Consequence.

Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, and Cat Power also paid tribute to Hansard following the news, as reported by RTÉ and Pitchfork.

The Christmas Eve Busk, which Hansard began organising in 2010, is an annual charity concert in Dublin that raises money for people in need. Bono, the Edge, Sinéad O'Connor, and Shane MacGowan were among the performers who took part over the years. As crowds grew, the event was moved to a stage outside the Gaiety Theatre on South King Street for safety. In a year when the busk did not go ahead in its traditional form, Bono and the Edge joined Hansard and friends on The Late Late Show to continue the tradition on television, according to U2's official site.

Bono's tribute made clear that Hansard's activism was inseparable from his music. He wrote that Hansard "could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK" and "worked very hard so that less people had to live on the streets in the first place" (Rolling Stone).

Hansard also appeared alongside U2, The Dubliners, and Kíla in the tribute recording "Here's to You, Ronnie Drew" in 2008, and was named among notable Dublin figures on U2's official tour page for their 2018 eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour (U2.com).

Bono closed his tribute with an image that compressed Hansard's whole career — the busker who became an Oscar winner and never stopped being a busker. "For me," he wrote, "he will always be everywhere I see a coin spinning into an open guitar case."