Overview
Les Bordées de Cancale is an annual traditional and maritime singing festival based in Cancale, near Saint Malo in Brittany. No sound system, no big stage, only conviviality, sharing and emotion. Join in and sing or just listen, as you like!
The 26th edition of the festival will take place between to 25th and 27th September, 2026 and this time, the Bordées take up minority languages as their theme, the opportunity to deepen the inexhaustible richness of this diversity and to offer you new discoveries around the songs interpreted in Gallo, Breton, Welsh, Occitan, Basque, Sicilian, Creole, Kanak, Svane, Mingrélien, Maorais, Mapuche, etc.
Every year, the Bordées Team invites you to join them in three days of festivals built around traditional and maritime songs. They include a rich and original program that enhances the genre, conferences on maritime heritage, intimate and warm concert venues, singers who express themselves without amplification in the middle of their audience – this is the spirit of a festival with a human dimension where the public can freely express themselves as an artist as well!
The festival is organised by the Phare Ouest association. Created in 1995 by enthusiasts of traditional singing and maritime culture, Phare Ouest has become in a few years a real engine of cultural animation in Cancale.
Initially focussed on the teaching of sailors’ songs to children, thus giving birth to the group “Les Pirates”, Phare Ouest created the festival “Les Bordées de Cancale” in 2000, that enhances the traditional maritime repertoires found in the collection.
It also offers a monthly traditional maritime singing workshop where one can discover the life and work of former sailing sailors and participate in concerts and sung vigils.
In tribute to Patrick Denain, February 2025.
Our friend Patrick left last Sunday to join the sailors’ paradise. A regular at the festival since its inception, he has been to almost every Bordées, most often in duets with Miguel Biard or Gromor, his singing companions.
He left his mark with his unique voice, his strength of expression and his commitment at each of the Bordées’ concerts in the Bistrots de la Houle, which always gave him a special welcome as if he were part of the family.
Patrick perfectly embodied the spirit of the Bordées through his generosity, his humility, his smile, and his love of sharing sea songs in bistros and refreshment stands. We remember him as a voice that touched the depths of the soul and immersed us in the maritime world and its sailors.