The village with two names
When it opened in the summer of 2007, this was one of the boldest retail bets Northern Ireland had seen — a purpose-built outlet shopping village on the A1 at Banbridge, reported to have cost around £70 million, planted squarely on the road between Belfast and Dublin to catch shoppers from both directions. They called it The Outlet, and for years that's exactly what everyone called it — many still do.
The bet took a while to come good. After a rocky spell, the village was bought in 2016 by Tristan Capital Partners and the local Lotus Property group — reportedly for around £40 million — who set about a serious refit: new look, new stores, new events, and in March 2018 a new name, The Boulevard, launched with catwalk weekends on the mall. The name fits the place better than you'd expect from a rebrand. It really is one broad, open-air boulevard — a single pedestrian street of shopfronts under sweeping canopy walkways, with planters and benches down the middle, more Continental market town than shopping centre.
Then Banbridge's other big story landed next door. Linen Mill Studios, two miles up the road, is where much of Game of Thrones was filmed, and when the official Studio Tour opened there, The Boulevard's car park became its park-and-shuttle point — so on any given day, some of the people wandering past Nike and Kate Spade are on their way to Winterfell. In June 2026 the village changed hands again, sold to Frasers Group, and the store list keeps turning over the way outlet villages do.
The reason it earns a spot on a days-out map is honest and simple: it's a free, easy, roll-up day. Everyone gets a wander in the fresh air, somebody bags a bargain, the kids get whatever's happening on the mall that week and maybe a film — and it's all thirty minutes down the road with a free parking space waiting.