Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival

Welcome to the Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival, the largest free nautical music and song festival in Europe!

Falmouth has a proud and long history as a first safe port of call for deepwater sailing ships. It was there that sailors filled waterside alehouses with song and it is there that those shanties and stories are kept alive today. If you listen very carefully as you walk along Falmouth’s seventeenth-century quays, you can still hear them singing!

Expect over eighty groups from across the UK, Europe and further afield, performing classic and contemporary shanties in the many town and quayside locations. From cosy pubs to professionally engineered main stages, street corners to parish churches, Falmouth has something for everyone.

Take a look at the shanty groups expected to participate in Falmouth’s International Sea Shanty Festival in 2025.

With performances from eighty groups in various venues across the town, Falmouth is filled with songs of the sea at the three-day festival. There are groups from the UK as well as groups travelling from overseas just to be part of the festival.

Find out more here.