Glen Hansard Played One Last Song at a Dublin Pub Hours Before His Death
Glen Hansard performed an unreleased song on acoustic guitar at the Wren's Nest pub in Dublin's Strawberry Beds on the night of 29 July 2026, hours before he was killed in a motorcycle crash. Video footage of the performance, shared by RTÉ News on Instagram and reported by Rolling Stone, shows Hansard alone at first, with another man joining on guitar by the end of the song to applause from the room.
The crash occurred in the early morning in Lucan, west Dublin. It was a single-vehicle motorcycle crash, according to a statement posted from Hansard's own social media account. He was 56. Reuters reported that the statement confirming his death was issued by his management company. The New York Post, publishing on 29 July 2026, identified the crash time as early morning.
Hansard, born in Dublin, was best known to international audiences for the 2007 film Once, in which he starred and for which he won an Academy Award for the song "Falling Slowly" (AP News). The film, a low-budget musical about a street musician and an immigrant pianist, became a touchstone for independent cinema and spawned a Tony-winning stage adaptation. He was also the frontman of the Irish band the Frames and half of the folk duo the Swell Season.
The Wren's Nest, a pub in the Strawberry Beds area along the Liffey west of the city, was a familiar setting for Hansard. He was known throughout Dublin for impromptu sessions in small rooms — the kind of place where the barrier between performer and audience dissolves.
He was also known for organising annual charity busk performances, usually staged at Christmas on Grafton Street, drawing large crowds and high-profile guest musicians. Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band was among those posting public tributes after his death, sharing condolences on social media on 29 July.
For a musician whose career began on Grafton Street as a busker, the final image is hard to separate from the rest of the story: a man with a guitar in a pub, playing a song nobody had heard before, joined by a friend, applauded by a room that did not know it was hearing him for the last time.
