Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, though it has a unique history and sporting culture more closely related to the Republic of Ireland. Some sports field a separate Northern Ireland team, among them football, netball, snooker and darts, while others are organised across the whole island, so that rugby union, hockey, cricket, Gaelic games and rugby league are all played for Ireland.

At the Olympic Games there is no Northern Ireland team. Athletes born in Northern Ireland are eligible for either Great Britain or Ireland, and may choose between the two. At the Commonwealth Games, by contrast, Northern Ireland competes as a nation in its own right.

Gaelic Games, traditional sports organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), are still popular in Northern Ireland (as they are throughout Ireland). The two main sports of Gaelic games are hurling and Gaelic football. The other two sports are Rounders and Gaelic Handball.

Below are details of sports, sporting events and sports people related to Northern Ireland. See also about sport in Ireland and sport in the UK, and the individual pages for England, Scotland, Wales.

Popular sports of Northern Ireland

Regional or Traditional Sports of Northern Ireland

  • Hurling — a Gaelic outdoor team sport where players use a wooden stick to hit a ball between the opposing team’s goalposts.
  • Gaelic Football — a contact sport which originated in Ireland.
  • Gaelic Handball — a wall based sport, played in Ireland, similar to squash though the ball is hit with the hand.
  • Rounders — played between two teams with a bat and ball, like softball.

Sporting Successes of Northern Ireland

  • Mary Peters winning the pentathlon at the 1972 Munich Olympics, for Great Britain, having already won two Commonwealth golds for Northern Ireland in 1970.
  • Rory McIlroy completing the career Grand Slam at the 2025 Masters, becoming only the sixth golfer in history to win all four majors.
  • Northern Ireland's run to the last 16 at Euro 2016, their first European Championship, after beating Ukraine 2–0 in Lyon.
  • Reaching the quarter-finals of the 1958 FIFA World Cup, still the national football team's best result.
  • A best-ever Commonwealth Games haul of 18 medals, seven of them gold, at Birmingham in 2022.
  • Three golfers from a country of under two million – Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy – winning a quarter of all the major titles played between 2010 and 2015.

Great athletes from Northern Ireland

  • Rory McIlroy (golf) — six-time major winner and career Grand Slam champion
  • Dame Mary Peters (athletics) — Olympic pentathlon champion in 1972
  • George Best (football) — Ballon d'Or winner in 1968
  • Darren Clarke (golf) — Open champion in 2011
  • Graeme McDowell (golf) — US Open champion in 2010
  • Barry McGuigan (boxing) — world featherweight champion
  • Alex Higgins and Dennis Taylor (snooker) — both world champions
  • Joey Dunlop (motorcycle road racing)
  • Jonathan Rea (motorcycle racing) — six consecutive World Superbike titles
  • Sir A. P. McCoy (horse racing) — champion jump jockey and BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2010

Northern Ireland Sports trivia

  • Royal Portrush is the only course outside Scotland and England ever to have hosted the British Open. It did so in 1951, when Max Faulkner won, then again in 2019, when Shane Lowry won, and in 2025, when Scottie Scheffler took the title.
  • Northern Ireland has no Olympic team of its own, but it does send a team to the Commonwealth Games, where it has won 142 medals.
  • Mary Peters has a Belfast athletics track named after her, and the trust she founded in 1975 still funds young athletes across Northern Ireland.
  • At the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, a Northern Ireland team of 65 won 16 medals — three gold, four silver and nine bronze — to finish 12th.

Northern Ireland at major events

Past sporting events hosted in Northern Ireland

  • 1951 British Open Golf Championship, Royal Portrush (County Antrim) — won by Max Faulkner
  • 2019 British Open Golf Championship, Royal Portrush — won by Shane Lowry
  • 2025 British Open Golf Championship, Royal Portrush — won by Scottie Scheffler

Annual sporting events held in Northern Ireland

  • North West 200 (motorcycle road racing) — held each May on "the Triangle", a nine-mile street circuit on public roads between Portstewart, Coleraine and Portrush. First run in 1929, it is the largest annual sporting event in Northern Ireland, drawing crowds of more than 150,000.
  • British Open (golf) - usually held in England and Scotland, and rarely Northern Ireland

Sporting Facilities in Northern Ireland

  • Royal Portrush Golf Club, County Antrim — three-time host of the British Open
  • Windsor Park, Belfast — home of the Northern Ireland football team
  • Mary Peters Track, Belfast — the national athletics stadium

Other

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