Glen Hansard’s motorcycle left the Lower Road in Lucan, on the western edge of Dublin, shortly before 4:30 on the morning of July 29, 2026. He was 56 and had an Oscar on his shelf for “Falling Slowly”. Two weeks earlier Ireland had lost Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award. These are ten of the best-known people who died in July 2026.
1. Joe Melson (July 1, aged 91)
Joe Melson wrote songs with Roy Orbison at the start of the 1960s, and three of them became standards: “Only the Lonely”, “Crying” and “Blue Bayou”. Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Blue Bayou” was a hit again in 1977, and “Crying” was revived by Don McLean and later by k.d. lang with Orbison himself.
2. Tommy Hunter (July 2, aged 89)
Tommy Hunter was “Canada’s Country Gentleman”. The Tommy Hunter Show ran on CBC Television from 1965 to 1992 and brought country music into Canadian living rooms every week for nearly three decades. His best-known song was “Mary in the Morning”.
3. Kjell Nilsson (July 2, aged 76)
Kjell Nilsson was a Swedish weightlifter before he turned to acting. Film fans know him as the Lord Humungus, the masked warlord in Mad Max 2, the man who orders the defenders of the oil refinery to “just walk away”. He died of kidney disease.
4. Sam Neill (July 13, aged 78)
Sam Neill was Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and its sequels, the husband in Jane Campion’s The Piano and the captain in The Hunt for Red October. Born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, he also ran a vineyard in Central Otago and posted videos of his farm animals. He had announced in April that he was cancer-free after treatment for blood cancer. His family called his death in Sydney “sudden and unexpected”.
5. Brenda Fricker (mid-July, aged 81)
Brenda Fricker won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1990 for playing Christy Brown’s mother in My Left Foot, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, and became the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award. She was also the Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2. Her agent said she died in Dublin after a period of ill health, and Ireland’s Tánaiste, Simon Harris, called her a national treasure.
6. Kevin Keegan (announced July 20, aged 75)
Kevin Keegan won the European Cup with Liverpool, the Ballon d’Or twice with Hamburg in 1978 and 1979, and later managed Newcastle United to the edge of the 1996 Premier League title. He also managed England, Fulham and Manchester City. His family said he died with his wife and daughters beside him after treatment for stage four cancer.
7. Kaylee Hottle (July 21, aged 18)
Kaylee Hottle, who was deaf, played Jia, the deaf girl who communicates with Kong in sign language, in Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Her father said she was killed in a car accident in Maryland. She was 18.
8. Chuck Russell (July 22, aged 74)
Chuck Russell directed The Mask, the 1994 comedy that made Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz stars, as well as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob and Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He also co-wrote several of his films.
9. Glen Hansard (July 29, aged 56)
Glen Hansard busked on Grafton Street as a teenager, played the guitarist Outspan in The Commitments and led The Frames for three decades. With Markéta Irglová he wrote “Falling Slowly” for the film Once, and the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Police said he was treated at the scene of the crash in Lucan and pronounced dead a short time later. Bruce Springsteen and the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin, were among those who paid tribute.
10. Franco Baresi (announced July 31, aged 66)
Franco Baresi spent his whole 20-year career at AC Milan, captained them to three European Cups and six Serie A titles, and won the 1982 World Cup with Italy. Milan retired his number 6 shirt. He had surgery in 2025 to remove a growth from his lung, and in February 2026 he carried the Winter Olympic torch into San Siro.
Keegan and Baresi died eleven days apart, two of the outstanding European footballers of the late 1970s and 1980s, one a forward who won the Ballon d’Or twice and the other a defender who never needed to leave one club.