Study film in Ireland and you are choosing between two very different systems: portfolio-assessed courses scored out of 1,000, and ordinary points degrees running from 246 to 469. This guide compares every film and television course in the country, explains the 1 February portfolio deadline, and shows what each one actually puts in your hands.
Most film and television degrees are scored the ordinary way, out of 625. The restricted portfolio courses at IADT’s National Film School are not: your Leaving Certificate points are combined with a portfolio score, so the published cut-offs run on a scale of up to 1,000 and cannot be compared with an ordinary points figure. Portfolio courses are marked below, and they close for application on 1 February, not in July. An asterisk means random selection was applied at that score, so not everyone on those points received an offer.
| UNIVERSITY | CAO CODE | PROGRAMME | AWARD | YEARS | 2026 R1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IADT | DL843 | Film (portfolio) | BA (Hons) | 4 | 913* |
| IADT | DL844 | Television (portfolio) | BA (Hons) | 4 | 702 |
| IADT | DL845 | Design for Film (portfolio) | BA (Hons) | 4 | 783* |
| IADT | DL857 | Film: Pathfinder, starting in Ireland (portfolio) | BA (Hons) | 3 | 750 |
| TU Dublin | TU983 | Film and Broadcasting | BA (Hons) | 4 | 469 |
| DCU | DC133 | Multimedia | BSc (Hons) | 3 | 388 |
| UCC | CK105 | Film and Screen Media | BA (Hons) | 3 | 382 |
| Univ. of Galway | GY127 | Arts (Film and Digital Media) | BA (Hons) | 3 | 379 |
| DCU | DC131 | Communication Studies | BA (Hons) | 3 | 360 |
| Maynooth | MH109 | Media Studies | BA (Hons) | 4 | 337 |
Points shown are 2026 CAO Round 1 cut-offs; purple badges are combined Leaving Certificate and portfolio scores on a scale of up to 1,000, not ordinary points. Verify at cao.ie/points. All of these are public institutions covered by the Free Fees Initiative if you are eligible.
Film and television is taught right across the technological university sector, often with smaller class sizes, more camera time per student and points well below the Dublin figures. These are the courses that get overlooked.
There is no licence, no registration board and no professional exam in this industry. Crew and commissioners hire on your showreel, your credits and whether you were reliable on the last job. What a course is actually worth to you is the kit you can get your hands on, the number of productions you crew before you graduate, and the people you meet while doing it. Ask every college how many shoots a student works on per year and who owns the footage afterwards.
| Institution | CAO Code | Programme | Level | 2026 R1 Points | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SETU | SE208 | TV and Media Production | L8 | 320 | Carlow |
| SE212 | TV and Media Production | L7 | 272 | Carlow | |
| Dundalk IT | DK864 | Film and Television Production | L8 | 246 | Dundalk |
| DK863 | Creative Media | L8 | 279 | Dundalk | |
| DK764 | Film and Television Production | L7 | 272 | Dundalk | |
| ATU | AU615 | Film and Documentary | L8 | 308 | Galway |
| AU616 | Communications, Media and Storytelling | L8 | 316 | Galway | |
| TUS | US807 | Creative Broadcast and Film Production | L8 | Check CAO | Limerick |
| US702 | Creative Broadcast and Film Production | L7 | 243 | Limerick | |
| US707 | Visual Effects for Film, TV and Animation (portfolio) | L7 | Check CAO | Clonmel | |
| TU Dublin | TU982 | Media Production and Digital Arts | L8 | 261 | Tallaght |
| Dublin Business School | DB567 | Film and Creative Media | L8 | 271 | Dublin city centre |
Points shown are 2026 CAO Round 1 cut-offs. Dublin Business School is a private college, so tuition fees apply and the Free Fees Initiative does not cover it; the technological universities on this table do come under Free Fees if you are eligible.
The ordinary-scale courses on this page run from 246 in Dundalk to 469 in Grangegorman, and yet crew lists on Irish sets are full of graduates from every one of them, alongside people who never went to college at all. Progress in film and television is made by getting onto sets, keeping the work, and building a reel. A lower-points course that has you shooting in first year can serve you better than a higher-points one that does not.
This is one of the few fields where the side doors are as well travelled as the front one, and where a portfolio year can be worth more than a hundred extra points.
A one-year film, television or creative media course in a further education college is the standard route for students who want a portfolio before they apply, or who did not get the points first time. Colleges such as Dun Laoghaire Further Education Institute, Ballyfermot, Coláiste Dhúlaigh and Dunboyne run film and media awards with named progression routes.
If the named film degrees are out of reach, a general Arts degree keeps the door open. Maynooth MH101 Arts, University of Galway GY101 Arts and UCD DN520 Arts all carry film, media or screen subjects that you choose into after first year, and all three sit well below the named programmes on points.
If you are 23 or over on 1 January of the year you start, you apply as a mature applicant through the CAO by 1 February, and you are assessed on your background, motivation and relevant experience rather than on Leaving Certificate points.
This route suits film particularly well. Anything you have actually made, crewed on or produced counts as evidence, and several colleges interview or ask for a portfolio as part of the assessment. Mature places are usually a reserved quota, so you are not competing against school leavers for them.
Plenty of people arrive at film in their twenties from English, history, business or engineering. A one-year taught masters in film production, screenwriting, documentary or post-production is the usual conversion, and IADT, TU Dublin and University of Galway all run them.
There is also the straightforward option of starting as a trainee or runner on a production and learning on the job, which is how a large share of working crew got in. Screen Skills Ireland runs trainee and returner programmes aimed squarely at this, and your previous degree is rarely held against you.
A runner is a runner whether they came from a conservatoire, a Level 7 in Dundalk, a PLC year or nowhere at all. Nothing on a crew list records which door you came in by, so choose the route that gets you making things soonest and keep the work.
European film schools and media faculties take Irish students on the same terms as their own, and several teach fully in English. For a field where co-production is the norm, a European training is a real asset rather than a compromise.
There is no professional registration to worry about in film and television, so an EU degree is not a barrier to working in Ireland, and it will be accepted for postgraduate entry here. The real cost is the one nobody puts in a prospectus: the Irish crew network you would have built during three or four years of student shoots, and the contacts who hire you afterwards. If you study abroad, plan deliberately for how you will keep a foot in the Irish sector, through summer work, festivals and placements. Check too whether the course is practice-based or academic, because European media degrees split sharply between the two.
As an Irish citizen you pay the same tuition as a domestic student across the EU, which in several countries is a few thousand euro a year or less, and considerably cheaper than a private college here.
The Netherlands has the widest choice of English-taught media and screen degrees, and specialist film schools in Belgium and Portugal teach international cohorts in English.
European screen industries run on co-production and public funding. A degree spent inside that system teaches you how the money and the partnerships actually work.
Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Czech Republic all have long-established film schools, several of which run English-taught programmes or exchange places. Many are conservatoire-style, with small intakes and competitive entrance assessments rather than points, so apply early and expect a portfolio or interview. Erasmus also means you can study in Ireland and still spend a semester or a full year at a European film school, which for most students is the lower-risk way to get the same benefit.
There is no professional exam to sit and no register to join. What happens instead is that you pick a department, and the department becomes your career.
The smallest departments and the hardest to enter directly. Most people arrive here after years in another role.
A clear ladder from trainee to clapper loader, focus puller, operator and eventually cinematographer.
Assistant editor, colourist, online editor and visual effects. Steadier hours than set work and often the first paid role graduates land.
Production sound on set, or post-production sound design, dialogue editing and mixing. Chronically short of people.
Production design, set construction, props, costume and make-up. This is what IADT’s Design for Film degree feeds directly into.
Runner, production assistant, coordinator, third to first assistant director, line producer. The most reliable way in from any degree.
None of the following is legally required, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. They are simply the things Irish employers and crew actually recognise.
Most screen work is freelance and paid by the day or the week, contract to contract. Annual figures depend as much on how many weeks you work as on your rate.
Indicative first-year earnings, usually assembled from short contracts rather than a salary. Expect gaps between productions early on.
Indicative for editors, coordinators, camera crew, sound and post-production staff with a few years of credits, or for staff positions in broadcast and corporate production.
Indicative for experienced department heads, cinematographers, editors and producers on well-funded productions, typically negotiated as a daily or weekly rate.
Feature and television drama, documentary, the international productions that shoot in Ireland, plus broadcasters and independent production companies.
Edit suites, grading and sound houses, visual effects and animation studios. Ireland’s animation sector in particular is an established graduate employer.
Advertising and branded content, corporate video, streaming and social platforms, live events, festivals, arts organisations, communications and teaching.
Salary figures are indicative ranges drawn from Irish recruitment and screen-industry salary guides, and vary widely by department, employer and how much of the year you are contracted. Many crew rates are negotiated per day or per week rather than annually.
The 1 February deadline matters more in this subject than almost any other, because the portfolio courses close on it and will not reopen.
Shoot, edit and finish short pieces, however rough. Portfolio assessment rewards evidence of thinking and persistence, not expensive equipment, and the students who struggle in sixth year are the ones starting from nothing. Read the portfolio guidelines early so you know what is being asked for.
Applications open in early November. Open days at IADT, TU Dublin and the technological universities cluster around this period, and for a practical subject they are worth attending in person to see the studios and edit suites.
Apply by 5pm on 20 January and the fee is discounted. There is no advantage beyond the money, but it also means the application is done before the February crunch.
Restricted portfolio courses, including every IADT film and television degree, must be on your list by 5:15pm on 1 February. So must mature applications. Miss it and those courses are gone for the year, no matter what your results are in August. A restricted course can be added later only through the change of course choices facility, for a fee and before the March deadline.
Portfolios are submitted digitally in the spring and marked separately from your Leaving Certificate. On the Pathfinder programme, portfolios are scored out of 1,000 with a pass mark of 400, and applicants who pass are invited to a short online interview about their work and motivation.
Free to use, and it closes at 5pm on 1 July. You can reorder anything already on your list, but you cannot add a restricted portfolio course at this stage if it was not there by February.
Leaving Certificate results come first, then Round 1 offers. For portfolio courses your offer reflects the combined score, so a strong portfolio can carry a modest points total and a weak one can sink a strong result.
Work on other people’s student films as well as your own, in departments that are not your favourite. This is where you find out what you are actually good at, and where the contacts that hire you later come from.
Your graduate film and your showreel are what you will be hired on for the next two years. Cut a reel that shows one department clearly rather than a little of everything, and get it in front of people before you graduate.
Most people start as a trainee or runner regardless of the degree, then move up inside a department. Trainee schemes, festival work and a well-kept contact list matter more in the first two years than where you studied.
This is the single biggest fork on the page. IADT, TU Dublin, DkIT, SETU, ATU and TUS teach you to crew and produce. UCC, Maynooth and the Arts routes at Galway teach you to analyse, write about and contextualise screen work. Both are legitimate and they lead to different lives. A student who wanted a camera in their hands and ended up in a seminar room is the most common unhappy case we see.
Four questions decide the quality of a practical course: how many productions will I crew on each year, what equipment can I book out and from when, how many students share each camera package and edit suite, and who owns what I make. Ask them at the open day. The answers vary far more between colleges than the points do.
On the IADT courses the portfolio is worth enough to change your outcome entirely, and it has to be ready months before the exams start. Begin it in fifth year, not in January. If you are already stretched, a PLC year exists precisely so that you can build one properly.
Most Irish screen production is concentrated around Dublin and Wicklow, with real clusters in Galway, Limerick and the north east. Being near a production base during term makes casual crew work possible. Budget realistically too: production costs, hard drives and travel to shoots add up on any practical course, and IADT alone advises roughly €750 to €1,000 a year.
There is no best film school in Ireland, only the one that puts you on the most sets with the most useful people. Every name on this page has graduates working in the industry and graduates who left it. What separates them is almost never the college: it is what they made while they were there, who they kept in touch with, and whether they were the person everyone wanted back on the next shoot.